Smike

Smike's Sheets

Liz

---

__________________________________________ Elizabeth Diana White, 23 _______________________________________________________________ Atlantic Federation | Prairie, Oceania _______________________________________________________________ [+] ▼ E X T R A I N F O R M A T I O N ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Height - 6'3" ► Weight - 176lbs ► Hair Color - Brown ► Eye Color - Grey ► Classification - Sniper ► Specialization - Saboteur ► Rank - Private First Class ► Sexuality - Bisexual -

D E T A I L E D A P P E A R A N C E Liz has exactly three things in common with her mom: her hair, her eyes and her height.The rest is as different as night and day. Where Victoria carries herself tall and wields her height like weapon Liz tends to gravitate towards corners and bend her knees to look shorter than she actually is. Her skin is soft and lacks the scars that her mother has, and her uniform is kept almost immaculate except in the most dire of situations. She wears a gold and silver watch that was a gift from her father and a simple bracelet given to her by Emma Godfrey. Liz is also built much more slender than her mother, lacking the broad shoulders and muscles of the elder White.

---_{P E R S O N A L I T Y}

Liz is quiet, meek, averse to conflict and quick to apologize, traits that drive her mother insane. Bouncing between rather chaotic households for most of her childhood has made her very timid and withdrawn from the world, inheriting neither the natural charisma of her father or the self-confidence of her mother. When caught in an argument she tends to look at her feet and mumble responses and being yelled at just makes her crumble entirely. It's rare for her to volunteer any information about herself without being coerced or cajoled, preferring not to tell any one about her hobbies or professions. The thing she's really open with is her cat, speaking to it about what she did with her day and telling it her hopes and dream because it won't
judge her.

In an effort to get her to toughen up as a child Victoria had told her stories nearly every night of the horrors of war and the savagery violence she had lived through and done to try and show her how pointless it was to be a timid little wreck. It didn't work. Liz simply became a timid wreck with an interest bordering on obsession with death. Many of the paintings and photographs in her private college are of animal bones and bodies, Liz spending sketching out and tracing them with rapt attention to detail. There's nothing sinister or murderous about it, it's just a hobby.

In the rare cases where Liz manages to make a friend she's incredibly clingy, often randomly wrapping them in tight hugs and asking if they're okay no matter the situation. She's just so starved for positive attention and affection that she doesn't know how to act when she gets it, just holding on tight and praying they won't let go.

---_{B I O G R A P H Y}

In her infantile years, Liz was essentially raised by the late Grandma Liz, from whomst she earned her name. It was difficult being raised by one so advanced in age, but at the very least, there was food on the table thanks to Mama Vicky's paychecks. When Vicky returned from the war, she moved out with her. Vicky treated her...distantly, affirming her love for her, but then soon lashing out for being the cause of her life getting ruined. Liz was fed, kept warm and given clean clothes, but none of this provided shelter to Victoria's vicious drunken rants, where she would often lament the unexpected birth of a child turning an already difficult life into one of unbridled torment.

Nothing she did was satisfactory, no matter the endeavor or scale. Victoria constantly pushed her to do something more impressive or worthwhile to avoid repeating the same life she had. Paired with a mother still in the military, Liz had to bounce around from base to base with her mom, eventually winding up in boarding school. Soon after, however, a most unexpected appearance turned to the fold; Her biological father had came back into her life. Victoria was furious. Immediately, she scathed him viciously with vernacular no child should be witness to bear, but after her intense pleas, Victoria was eventually convinced by her grandmother to allow Liz to know her dad.

Charles and Liz got along well enough, never to the relationship of a true father and daughter, his role more like that of a distant bum-cousin who lets her crash at his place and keep his other kids out of his hair for a while when her mom was, "being a cunt." When she got away, Liz discovered a love for the arts, picking up painting and drawing as a way to kill time with her half-siblings and later photography when she got a cheap camera as a gift. Book-writing came from her mom's, Diana's, and Luke's stories about the war, Liz turning them into adventure stories and selling them under pseudonym.
For what seemed like the first time in her life, Liz's mom appeared thoroughly impressed with her work. No longer were her compliments peppered with notions of missing potential nor mediocrity, instead, Victoria was rather proud that her little mouse of a daughter could muster up the courage to put herself out in the world, and strongly encouraged her to continue to refine her skills. For a while, she did just that.

But, Liz knew the cycle was bound to continue, and if she had just gotten better, then her mom was going to take that for granted, too.

And in a perhaps misguided attempt to solidify her mother's praise, she enlisted in the military and specifically aimed for placement in the Ranger Corps, putting herself in a position Victoria tried so hard to divert her from.

---_{P O T E N T I A L S}

Renaissance Woman: Liz devotes much of her free time to her crafts, scribbling down notes for stories and sketches or blocking out shots when not on duty. While not open about her double life it wouldn't be impossible for someone with "Captain Harris West's" work to notice some similarities...
Morbid: Growing up listening to vivid descriptions of carnage will affect a kid. Liz has an interest with death and decay than can be more than a little disturbing to passer-by. Some of her favorite subjects for her art are corpses and she may or may not have a necklace of bird bones stashed in her kit.
Friend of Nature: Animals of all kinds are very dear to Liz's heart. She saves parts of her meals to leave out for wildlife and can spend hours just observing the birds. She has affection for other animal lovers and one of the only things that makes her angry is cruelty to critters.

---_{E Q U I P M E N T}

- LF-ASR No. 1
- Camo-Cloak
- Ragnaid
- BD-3 Light Armor
- Feedback Screecher (Gizmo)
- Personal Camera (Requisitioned)

---_{A F F I L I A T I O N S}

- Charles Blake (Father)
- Victoria White (Mother)
- Luther Godfrey ("Cousin")
- Emma Godfrey (“Cousin”)
- Mary Blake (Half-Sister)
- Mark Blake (Half-Brother)

---_{R E L A T I O N S}

- Luke Godfrey (Her "uncle" that she spent summers with)
- Diana Godfrey (Her "aunt" and the origin of her middle name)
- Soot (Her friend and closest confidant)

-

---

-A Template by Load Wraith

Smike's Sheets

Vic

---

__________________________________________ Victoria White, 39 _______________________________________________________________ Atlantic Federation | Prairie, Oceania _______________________________________________________________ [+] ▼ E X T R A I N F O R M A T I O N ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔ ► Height - 6'5" ► Weight - 202 lbs ► Hair Color - Brown ► Eye Color - Grey ► Classification - Shocktrooper ► Specialization - Raider ► Rank - (Applying for Staff) Sergeant ► Sexuality - Bisexual -

D E T A I L E D A P P E A R A N C E Victoria is much taller than most women and quite a few men, standing at a full 6'3" when upright. The rangy leanness of her childhood and teen years of starvation has passed, the career soldier having bulked out from a steady source of food. Her body type could be described as Amazonian, height accentuated by her obvious strength. Her biceps and calves are thick with muscle, her abs clearly outlined on her stomach. brown hair hangs down messily over her face and around her head to be scooped out of the way when it becomes annoying. Her body bears marks from the the battles of the first war as well as her rough upbringing, a jagged scar tracing its way over her right eye, a result of a bottle being shattered against her head. More cover her forearms, left by hot shrapnel. Her uniform is hidden by the waterproof cape she's carried since it was issued to her in the 1910s, the rabbit felt hat of the Oceanic Expeditionary Force still perched on her head after all this time. Two extra bandoleers are wrapped around her torso for easy access.

---_{P E R S O N A L I T Y}

The wild years of Vicky's youth are far behind her. Instead of drinking to party and bragging about how she can kick the ass of anyone in the room she usually drinks by herself and thinks about just where her life has taken her. A member of the Federation's Rangers who hates the Federation itself and a high school drop out who uses a pseudonym to write eloquent essays calling for Oceania's independence, she's a mess of contradictions and poorly managed trauma. She's open about her life but pretends that it didn't really affect her, ignoring her nightmares and anxiety driven hallucinations.

Her relationship with her daughter is awkward, Victoria loving her daughter but never really knowing how to properly express it. Liz has to settle for backhanded compliments and unwanted advice about how children can ruin her life. With friends Vicky is a different person, boisterously loud and full of life. But she tends to keep her true thoughts to herself, a bitter old woman who's upset she made it as long as she did.

---_{B I O G R A P H Y}

Victoria White was born in Prairie, Oceania to a pair of struggling sheep ranchers who could hardly afford the three kids they already had, much less a fourth. The elder White children had been calculated risks, extra hands to help with labor. Victoria was an accident and knew it. Her mere existence drove the family to the brink of ruin, her parents just managing to sell enough wool to keep a roof over their heads through hard work and suffering. The day after she was born Victoria was swaddled and carried on her mother's back as she herded the flocks. Within two years every sheep they had either died or was sold off. A massive drought hit Prairie, turning the cattle town into a wasteland. Crops failed and homesteads were sold off or abandoned by people who could afford to move. Everyone who couldn't buckled down and made the best of a bad situation.

Victoria's earliest memories were of her older siblings teaching her how to strip copper from wires and dig through empty houses for any valuables left behind, the young girl taking quickly to the work.. By the time her siblings left in search of better prospects she could be trusted to go out for a few days and return with enough scrap to buy enough flour to last a week. But she wasn't the only hunting for things in the old homesteads. Gangs of youths had formed, stealing everything that wasn't nailed down and fighting among themselves for bragging rights and the best spots to tear through. Victoria was jumped into one when she was fourteen and quickly made a name for herself, learning to drink and fight with the best of them.

She was fifteen when she drunkenly stabbed another girl to death, sixteen when she got pregnant. The father was a petty thief and con-man four years her senior who rather unsurprisingly disappeared. Left by herself Victoria fell back on her family for assistance. Elizabeth White was born in the same dilapidated side room as her mother and Victoria was back to scrounging anything of worth by the next day. The famine had ended but the damage was done: Prairie was a ghost town totally devoid of opportunity. How was she supposed to feed her kid?

The answer came in the form of the First Europan War. Victoria followed the time honored tradition of uneducated youth every war and signed up to fight. She was good at it too, pushing aside her fear and horror with the hep of cheap booze and slashing her way through the opposition. By the end of the war she had earned herself a medal for bravery during a particular nasty trench raid.

When the guns died down she stayed in the army, settling down into a life of moving from base to base with little Elizabeth. With no war to fight she spent her time educating herself, reading more books in a year than she had total up to that point. With knowledge came reflection, Victoria ruminating on the war and her life in Oceania. She had devoted herself to an utterly pointless conflict, took part in the slaughter of millions in the name of a country that had done nothing and cared nothing for her. The Federation let her people starve, keeping Oceania's resources and manpower firmly under its control control while she had been forced to loot for scrap metal.

Thinking about how she and her country had been used as little more than cannon fodder weighed on Victoria heavily, driving her to do something she had never really done before: write. It was minor at first, a few minutes each day scribbling her thoughts and grips in a little notebook. But as time went on and she got a better of language and the world stage it began to expand into essays about topics ranging from the treatment of Darscens to economic policy and colonialism. It was almost therapeutic for her, Victoria letting herself opinions she hadn't even known she was capable of having.

Sending them to newspapers was really the next logical step but with a kid to raise and bills to pay there was no way she was going to risk being fired or imprisoned by using her real name. Victoria White became Hudson Weber, notorious agitator and borderline anarchist depending on who you asked. Even as she was making a (fake) name for herself as an essayist White joined the Rangers in search of higher pay and something to do. It was the only option she had, having no other skills or trade besides sewing. She served the Federation with distinction by day as a Ranger by day and railed against it at night for fifteen years, managing to keep the wheels of contradiction turning with steady usage of alcohol as lubricant.

When the second war was declared she was more excited than she had been in years. She would get to do what she was good at again

---_{P O T E N T I A L S}

Berserk: Being a shocktrooper requires unwavering dedication to the Federal cause and a complete lack of fear, two things Victoria lacks. She makes up for it with brute strength, speed and insanity. When charging enemy positions she became a snarling beast hellbent on driving her bayonet through some chests. She excels at using her fists and any nearby objects to bludgeon the enemy into submission. She handles problems out of combat the same way she does in: with overwhelming force.

Mother Bear: Her first priority is her daughter, her second is friends and everything else is third. She doesn't really know how to show it but Victoria cares for very much for her daughter, silently checking up on her in camp and watching her to make sure she doesn't get into trouble. With friends she's loud, boastful and loyal, watching their back in the field and shooting the shit with them out of it.

Resourceful: Scavenging for scrap and substituting horse meat for beef as a child has made Victoria a very cost-efficient kind of person. She can knit and sew to keep her clothes in shape, turn substandard or small amounts of ingredients into a decent meal and sniff out all sorts of usable goods from bargain bins and ruined houses alike. A more unfortunate side effect of her rough upbringing is that Victoria sees wrong with looting the dead. After all, they don't need it anymore. She usually sticks to enemy corpses but if a Federation soldier had some trinket she wanted or is valuable enough to sell then she won't say no.

Functional Alcoholic: While certainly in a better place than she was twenty years ago Victoria is by no means cured of her alcoholism. She's managed to hold down a job and keep a roof over her and her daughter's head by hiding her problem and building a tolerance. No longer the kind to drink to the point of blacking out, she still becomes noticeably less social and angrier when she's been sober too long.

Hidden Depths: Victoria is still as foul-mouthed and crude as ever but now hides a deep interest in politics. Sometimes when a particular issue has been weighing on her or she's just looking for an argument to pass the time she'll tap into that well and present her case while cursing up a storm.

---_{E Q U I P M E N T}

- Reising M9A1 (Higher rate of fire and ammo capacity but less accurate and less reliable)
- F1 Grenades
- Ragnaid
- ND-3 Combat Armor
- FW Mk. I (Gizmo)
- Rawlings Model 1903 Combat Shotgun(Requisitioned)

---_{A F F I L I A T I O N S}

- Elizabeth White (Daughter)
- Charles Blake (Worthless Bastard)
- Emma Godfrey (Goddaughter)
- Luther Godfrey (Godson)

---_{R E L A T I O N S}

Luke Godfrey (Old squadmate, the son she never knew she wanted)
Diana Godfrey (Old squadmate and one-time fling, married to Luke)

-

---

-A Template by Load Wraith

Iliad City: A Magical RP in an Original World (Resuming)

Lynx

Name: "Lynx"

Appearance:

The Stranger

No matter how many times she edits her appearance some things remain forever nonhuman, but thankfully are easily hidden. Indigo eyes with a cat's vertical pupils are hidden by contacts, her flexible spine and floating collar bone only noticeable if one were to walk in on her squeezing into some tight space. Her ridiculously low heart rate (less than ten beats per minute) and ability to operate in low oxygen environments are essentially invisible under normal circumstances.

Age: She lost track of the exact number long before living memory but she's been kicking around since the creation of the universe.

Bio: Whatever name Lynx had gone by at the beginning of time, however she had carried herself, she had probably already been bored. Springing into existence at the dawn of the universe fully formed and ready to rumble she originally quite liked the powers that had been given to her. But when the novelty wore off it quickly became apparent just how unpleasant of a life she was going to have. The speed at which she processed information meant that the world was in a constant state of slow motion for her, every moment spent waiting an unbearable torment.

Any hobby or pastime would have all the enjoyment sucked out of it within weeks or days, the Custodian quickly dissembling the activity and piecing it back together thousands upon thousands of times. She bounced from job to job, serving as everything from professional chef to starship captain to doctor and leaving after a few years when it became unbearably mundane. She merely existed for millions of years, trapped in constant race for gratification and amusement.

When some of her brethren went rogue it blindingly obvious that it wouldn't go well for them. The majority of Custodians that had stayed loyal had literal God on their side, only an idiot would have taken those odds. But fighting a doomed war followed by bitter defeat sounded more interesting than curbstomping a few rebels so of course she picked the losing side. The war went about as well as expected, she took out a few loyalists before getting booted out with the surviving rebels.

Historia made a decent place for a crash landing. The Custodian found herself among humanity, a race that measured up to hers about as well as ants did to them. But how interesting they were! Fragile and short-lived creatures they still dedicated themselves to climbing mountains and crossing barren deserts, just as willing to create beautiful (by their standards anyway) works of art as they were to form armies and raze each others homes to the ground. Irrational and hot-blooded, driven to prove that their lives had meaning even though the universe would have forgotten about them in a million years or two, they were simultaneously kind of pathetic and sort of inspiring in their stubbornness.

The Custodian was fascinated by them and wanted to get a closer look, so she began to disguise herself as members of their race. She spent time in the guise of queens, knights, artist, beggars, murderers, thieves and every archetype under the sun, poking at society to watch how it squirmed. She helped establish codes of law and then proceeded to break them to get a look at the prisoners suffering in salt mines, commissioned great works of art for museums and then joined barbaric hordes and stole them. She spent time living on the streets, watching the faces of those who'd give her a few coins and those who acted as if she didn't exist.

It was essentially an undercover investigative report. She learned just as much about humans watching them drag Descendants out of their beds as she did seeing them band together to recover from natural disasters. Over the millennia she built up a strangely patronizing affinity for them, regarding them as amusing animals that could do tricks.

Eventually she ended up in Hermannreich in the form of a gunrunner turned revolutionary, working with a cell of freedom fighters that sabotaged military installations and assassinated high value targets until they were wiped out by a surprise raid. The alien made her exit as her comrades were being lined up for summary execution, escaping to Iliad under the guise of a gunslinger and mechanic turned insurgent fleeing political persecution. With her billions of years worth of technological experience both human and otherwise it was easy enough to set up shop as a mechanic and machinists, getting herself a job as the shop teacher at Marduk. She got herself another position as a history instructor, firsthand knowledge of the world's major events coming in handy.

And so Instructor Lynx became a upstanding citizen of Iliad, wiling away the time grading essays and dismantling engine blocks as she waited for the inevitable need to drop everything and run.

Mundane Skills: Quite frankly her skillset is immense to the point of being too long to list. But for the sake of getting into character the Custodian limits herself to whatever her current identity would be good at. In Lynx's case her skill with firearms and melee combat is quite literally superhuman, at a level obtainable only through her natural powers and millennia of practice. She is a talented alchemist and machinist, modifying her gear and crafting different types of ammo for different types of targets,and has a penchant for explosives. Her careers of planning and foiling assassinations and robberies give her a good sense of small-scale tactics, her specialty being ambushes and smash-and-grab type operations. Stealth is a given, the alien just as quiet as her current namesake when she wants to be.

Powers:
Supernatural Senses- Like her namesake Lynx relies on her senses to get an edge over her opponents. On a day to day basis her sense of smell is as good as a dog’s, counting individual threads on a person’s shirt from across the room and hearing each breath they take. She’s capable of much more when she focuses but limits this to avoid sensory overload.

The real advantage is her ability to detect magic. If you’re paying attention there’s certain giveaways inherent to arcane energy. A low hum of some great machine, a minuscule hint of copper on the tongue, a faint shimmer in the air.Lynx can pick up on these clues that others miss and follow them, seeing through illusions and trailing mages by traits specific to their spells.

Super-Speed- Good luck getting the draw on her. Lynx can move at about the speed of sound when running and hit Mach 2 if she were to sprint all out. Incredibly fast but also incredibly exhausting. Moving that fast for any longer than a few hours necessitates her to eat about half her weight to fuel the boost in metabolism so she tends to cruise at four hundred or five hundred miles an hour (when she's not forced to crawl along out of discretion.)

Enhanced Endurance- Moving twice as fast as sound requires a tough body. Lyxn is mostly unaffected by extreme speed or temperatures and needs only a few hours of sleep a week. Her stomach is strong enough that she can taste poisons to evaluate their strength, her skin shattering mundane weapons and deflecting some spells. Walls are no trouble, able to be smashed through with no adverse reaction.

Equipment : Krait- One of the first things she made after being so rudely ejected from the One's favor. The glove houses a container for storing all manner of liquids and a nozzle designed to eject it as an aerosol up to 15 feet. Typically loaded with various irritating agents or toxins.

Wife and Mother- A pair of matched revolvers that she took off a dying loyalist in the war in Heaven. Prime examples of Custodian engineering they generate the energy required to fire and are "reloaded" by letting the excess heat drain. The hammers can be fanned for rapid fire but doing so runs the risk of overheating them.

Starstrike- The usage of advanced Custodian materials allow the bow to be as strong as steel while remaining flexible, able to loaded with arrows of varying types. It's most valuable trait is its ability to absorb and charge arrows with starlight, the energy channeled into the tip to punch through armor and unleash a corona of searing light inside them.

Savagry-A tribute given to her during her days as warlord, Savagery is designed to hold under the extreme stresses of her usage, staying solid under forces and temperatures that would reduce a normal dagger to slag.

Plasmids: Not actually part of a bacteria's cytoplasm but the combination of chemicals and computer input that let her change her face. A thoroughly unpleasant process that requires her to isolate for a week as her durable body slowly melts and reforms.

Tools- The selection of wrenches, hammers, drills, plasma cutters, and other tools she uses to fix machines and make bombs and arrowheads as well as the stockpile of materials for doing so. These range from sheets of metal waiting to be cut to old cars dumped out in her back yard and rusty weapons ready to be stripped for parts.

The Essentials- Cigars and her hip flask.

Currently Planned Builds or Repairs

MAGs- An upgraded version of the Krait. Made with components from a crashed Custodian ship the Mobility Assistance Gloves serve a dual purpose. The first is to form a seemingly unbreakable bond with a surface to allow Lynx to make sudden stops while running and hang from buildings.

The second is to gather the kinetic energy produced by her movement and store it to be released as needed. This allows for movement in mid-air as well as adding substantial force to her blows.

Matriarch and Patriarch- Wife and Mother after being spruced up and getting their inner workings tweaked. Heat build up is now less of a problem and a "choke" has been added to allow for different shot patterns: a wide shotgun style spray, the normal shot that splashes against a target and a focused beam to punch through cover.

Personality: "Blessed" with otherworldly speed and the required reaction time to manage it every moment of everyday in Lynx's life is more or less a living hell. Her natural impatience combined with the fact that time appears to move much slower for her than it would anyone else means that she bounces around from distraction to distraction, spending scarcely a few minutes on anyone thing before moving to the next. Her self-restriction of her speed causes her to twitch and fiddle with coins and other small objects, a nervous tic she passes off as shell-shock.

While she understands the difference between right and wrong it doesn't really factor much into her daily life. She does what the current persona she's inhabiting would do whether that's building orphanages and going on one woman crusades to rescue kidnapping victims or earning a reputation as fearsome raider pillages villages for sport. The morality of an act is much less important to her than if its in-character or interesting.

"Lynx" is more or less a good person, an exiled freedom fighter turned mechanic and teacher. She pays her taxes, shows up to work on time and gives students the extra attention they require and always has customer's repaired items returned to them promptly. She has a poker game every Thursday, plays golf on weekends with friends from work or just around the neighborhood and generally presents as a good-natured veteran that is sometimes a bit off.

Faction (Marduk, Ishtar, or Cassandra Club when it's founded): Marduk for the time being, whatever seems interesting after that.

Are you a Descendant of the Illuminated Poet?: No

Important Relations:
-Lilith: A pickpocket, beggar and all around street rat Lynx picked up off the street shortly after arriving in Iliad. In return for room and board she serves as Lynx's apprentice and errand-runner, working on orders that come in when her boss is out.
-Ereden Helbrien : Four or five centuries ago the Helbriens slighted Lynx in some way she's now forgotten about. Since she was posing as stranger sorceress at the time she cursed the family so that every thirty years they would suffer tragedy, a promise she has been making good on since then because it's mildly funny. Much to her delight a couple of their number brought their family to Iliad in an attempt to escape the curse and now the son is one of her top students.

Ereden is studious, serious and determined so it was no surprise to Lynx that much of his studies were devoted curses and how to break them. She hasn't decided if she'll let him succeed.

-Lieutenant Rin Mistold: An old poker buddy of Lynx's and higher up in the local law enforcement. In return for bringing the beer and snacks to their weekly games Lynx is more or less immune to the noise complaints sometimes generated by her late experimentation.

-Family: She lost track of how many spouses, flings and common law partners she's had over the years and doesn't much care to try and remember. None of them ever knew her true nature and she generally either waited for them to die before cutting ties with the family or simply disappeared from their lives. Her children were simply told their Custodial powers were their form of magic.

In total she's mothered (and fathered depending on her form at the time) hundreds of offspring and would have a truly incredible amount of descendants, not like most if any of them would know who she is.

Theme:
TBD

Iliad City: A Magical RP in an Original World (Resuming)

Coyote

Name: "Coyote"

Appearance:

The One With The Loaded Gun

Age: She lost track nearly 1,500 years ago but certainly more than that.

Bio: Back before mankind was doing anything as complicated as living in caves and struggling to make tools out of sharp rocks and sticks the woman who would come to be known as Coyote was already old. A Custodian and proud of it, and why wouldn't she be? Her kind was brought into existence as the embodiment of perfection, already at the height of their abilities unlike lesser creatures who had to dig themselves out of the primordial soup with their newly grown legs. But she didn't complain, kept her opinions on lesser beings to herself.

But when the Custodians were cast down she felt utterly betrayed. She had stayed neutral in the conflict and the One still cast her out. Clearly he hadn’t wanted her so she’d wreak havoc on his favorite creations. And for a while she did, turning people against the One and hunting down descendants of the Poet. And she was damn good at it too, quickly learning that speed and aggression could trump magic when properly applied. But without any reliable way to contact other Custodians she was completely alone, nearly going insane from years spent in the wilderness. A hard blow to the skull from a dying Descendant put things in perspective for her: either keep doing as she was and get killed within 10,000 years or settle down into a quieter life.

So after a few centuries she integrated herself into human life, moving around from place to place every few decades and explaining away her youthful appearance as a side effect of her magic. She even started a family. And another, and another. Because even though she was a Custodian, her spouses and children weren’t. So eventually they all died of disease or old age and she stayed the same, becoming more and more bitter each time. By roughly the tenth family she made a rule for herself: no more attachments to things that live less than her.

And so she started to wander again, the head wound she had sustained caused her to lose chunks of her memories. At some point she realized that she had forgotten her own name, adopting Coyote as a moniker out of respect for their tenacity. And so she continued on, working as a mercenary and hunting all sorts of mundane and magical beasts and moving on in search of the next contract. For the time being she’s settled into the city of Illiad to pose as a student of Marduk and wait until something better comes along.

Mundane Skills: Thousands upon thousands of years of relying on no one but herself has made Coyote very self-sufficient. Her skill with firearms with firearms and vehicles of all kinds is superhuman, at levels obtainable only through eons of practice. She is a skilled alchemist and machinist, modifying her gear and crafting different types of ammo for different types of targets,and has a penchant for explosives.

Of course like any good gunslinger she plays the guitar and harmonica, filling lonely nights on the range with haunting music.

Powers:
Enhanced Senses- When she focuses Coyote can hear a man's heartbeat a room away, count the thread on a man's shirt and smell blood from two miles away (assuming the conditions are right). Useful for tracking quarry and seeing through illusions but used sparingly to avoid sensory overload.

Super-Speed- Good luck getting the draw on her. Coyote can move at about the speed of sound when running and reach up to Mach 2 when all out sprinting. Certainly faster than her bike but also much more taxing to do. Using this ability for any extended period of time necessitates her to eat about half her weight to fuel the boost in metabolism.

Enhanced Durability- If she can't dodge the hit she can probably take it. To keep her from shattering all of her bones as soon as she sprints her body is naturally as durable as high tensile steel, immune to bullets and melee weapons.

Equipment : Migrator- Because horses are impractical. Tough enough that it rarely breaks down and simple enough for her to fix when it does the Monster Scout is fast, maneuverable, and dependable.

Wife and Mother- A pair of matched pistols that were a gift from someone very important to her who she can no longer really remember. Named such to remind herself to never be those things again.

Apostasy- Named back when Coyote was using it to actively fight against the One's interests, this rifle is equally good at killing beasts and Descendants. Of course it hasn't been used for the latter in a very long time.

Savagry- Named for what it does best. Also serves as a good can opener, woodcutter and mirror when properly polished.

Tinker's Tools and Reloading Bench- Usually kept in her home for when she needs to make repairs or brew up more ammo and explosives.

The Essentials- Harmonica, guitar, hip flask, cigars and a lighter. The only things worth living for.

Personality: Coyote can described as somewhat aloof at the best of times and outright aggressive and hateful at the worst. Simply by nature of being human people are beneath her approval and have to work hard to meet it. Respect is met with curt cordiality, disrespect is returned tenfold. It's not unheard of for her to challenge repeat offenders to duels, nearly always to the death. If you need something from her it would be in your interest to just spit it out and avoid beating around the bush, time wasters are not high on the list of people she appreciates. Despite this she's often late to events that she doesn't find important or interesting, a side effect of her tortuously long life. After who knows how many thousands of years time frames mean little to her.

Custodian chauvinism used to play a part in her treatment of humans but now its more of a defense mechanism. After watching so many friends, spouses and children die of sickness and old age and fade from her memory she's made it a personal rule to never grow attached to anything that lives less than she does. And the best way to ensure that never happens is by making it so that no one ever wants to ask questions she can't or won't answer, like what her real name is or where she's from. All she needs in her life are her guns and a steady source of income from mercenary work to fuel her drinking and smoking needs.

Her relationship with other Custodians is fraught with difficulties as well. She sympathizes with other “traitors” having been one herself and thinks of Repentants as little more than sniveling sycophants desperately trying to curry the favor of the One who abandoned them in favor of a lesser race. The One is the real traitor in her eyes and his servants are not held in high esteem, for now at least.

Coyote feels immense pride in her achievements and abilities, decorating her apartment with trophies from various hunts and always eager to show off her skills. There's nothing she likes more than demonstrating just how fast, accurate and hard to hurt she is when there's money on the line.

Faction (Marduk, Ishtar, or Cassandra Club when it's founded): Marduk
Are you a Descendant of the Illuminated Poet?: No
Important Relations: -Kane, Micah and Rachel Helegast (Husband, Son, Daughter, all dead)
- ??? Makre, Jason Makre (Husband and Son, both dead)
-Kotori Flatcreek (Girlfriend, dead)
-Eyo-Zeki (Adopted son, dead)
-Marcus ???, ???, ??? (Husband and two children, dead)
- Mihek (Concubine/Bodyguard, dead)
-Vudir, Walthred, ??? (Husband, wife, husband or wife, all dead)
-??? (Boyfriend, dead)

Theme:

Theme

Iliad City: A Magical RP in an Original World (Resuming)

Dahlia

Name: Dahlia "Cobalt" Sangrey
Appearance:

Dahlia

Age: 18
Bio:Dahlia Sangrey was born into the fabulously wealthy and powerful Sangrey Family, descendants of the Illuminated Poet who used their powers to corner a number of markets. The Family's enterprises quickly grew from a couple of drugstores to include most of the manufacturing in Iliad, multiple upscale nightclubs and bars, mines and cattle ranches outside the city and a shipping company to facilitate trade with the rest of the world. With that much industry and wealth in their control it wasn't hard for the Sangreys to end up whispering in the ears of the City-Council for generations and even having favor with a few Mayors. The Family used its valuable position to continue enriching itself, getting a number of business friendly laws and regulations passed and building good-will with the populace by building shelters and creating charities for the poor and sick.

Beneath this facade of goodwill and kindness runs a darker undercurrent. The Family is run by the Patriarch, an ancient and mostly unseen figure who's rumored to be the only surviving child of the Illuminated Poet. Under his guidance the family has developed a personal philosophy that values strength, honor, power and nobility. Depending on which Sangrey you asked (assuming you could even get one to speak about it to you) this philosophy is similar to anything from survival of the fittest to Monarchism to outright Fascism but one thing remains the same: the Sangreys should be at the helm of the city of Illiad. To that end each member does their best to push towards this goal, every generation digging its claws in a little deeper.

Dahlia is just the newest player in the game. The youngest out of eight children (more children mean more future bankers, politicians and celebrities) the newest addition to the Family was given to tutors before she could even properly walk. Her childhood studies went past simple arithmetic and language skills and into the realm of high society, learning to speak multiple languages and studying classic works of literature and art. It wasn't enough for her parents that she simply had an appreciation, she would have to master them as well. When Dahlia was seven she was made to spend ten and twelve hour days practicing, long nights of learning to sing and paint and play the piano and violin. Every failure was met with a curt "Again", the young girl reading sheet music and staring at canvases until her eyes went blurry. At age nine she practiced her magic for the first time and it changed her appearance drastically into horned creature, forever marking her in her own eyes as irrevocably tainted.

And it paid off. Dahlia grew into an intelligent young lady capable of discussing and debating topics as varied as politics, business, the nature of the stars and man, and the benefits and drawbacks of magic and technology. When she turned fifteen she was enrolled in the Ishtar School for Creative Minds to enhance and hone her already naturally formidable magical abilities as part of the final preparations to begin pushing her family's agenda.

Mundane Skills:Dahlia is a world class musician and artist, demonstrating her talents with her piano, voice, violin, brush and pen at concerts and galleries throughout the city. Thanks to her no expense spared private education she can hold her own in any intellectual conversation and dominate quite a few of them. She's also a skilled fencer and kick-boxer and is familiar with firearms, having been trained to temper the brute force of her magic with the proper skill.

Magic: Dahlia's relationship with magic is... complicated. Her blood relation to the Illuminated Poet allows to use her music as a means of casting spells from the Curse, Disease and Bone schools of magic, the types of the magic the Sangrey family has traditionally been most adept with. But a childhood accident while learning her abilties is what her changed her appearance into the blue skinned and yellow eyed demon she is today. On top of that extended usage of her abilities with result in her body withering and skin cracking, blood dripping from her eyes and other painful side effects. So it tends to be a last resort.

Bone Manipulation-Trying this spell when she was unprepared was what kickstarted her drastic appearance change. If used on herself this spell can cause thick bone plating spread from her horns to cover her whole body in armor plating sturdy enough to stop bullets and spells and generate obsidian sharp bone blades and claws.

Curse-Dahlia can mark a target so that they suffer from bad luck and general misfortune. The universe seems to conspire against the victim, making them suffer all manner of mishaps from hazards appearing just in front of them as they walk to spells misfiring to doors being mysteriously jammed shut.

Vectors of Infection- Dahlia summons swarms of plague rats and corpse flies to gnaw their way into someone.

Hex- The most straight forward of Dahlias abilities, this spell much like a gun: Point at the enemy and fire. It’s projectile is a shot of pure arcane energy. Used as part of a one-two combo with either the bone blade or a normal firearm, the idea being that one deals with defenses in place for the other

Cloudburst- Sickly yellowish-green smoke pours from her mouth, filling the room. The effects are similar to tear gas at first, irritating the eyes and throat. Prolonged exposure can lead to internal bleeding, the mucus membranes of the body shedding, temporary blindness, vomiting and eventually death if left unchecked.

Suffering- The spell does no physical damage but causes the victim to suffer from severe pain, randomly affecting them with everything from the feeling of their teeth being pulled out of their head to being burned alive. The effect lasts for as long As Dahlia is able to maintain concentration on the target.

Personality: Dahlia is quiet and thoughtful, mulling over her words and selecting the best one for the occasion. While not thrilled by the idea of conflict she will rarely back down from one out of fear of looking weak, something that she can not tolerate. She's friendly and polite enough but is slow to actually trust, not liking the idea of having to rely on another person. The only topics she'll let herself be truly open about is music and art, gushing about her next project or the amazing landscape sketch she had just bought with money from the well-stocked private bank account courtesy of her parents.

In regards to her family's personal philosophy she's somewhat subdued in enthusiasm, feeling that there's something inherently off about the whole deal but nowhere near brave enough to risk the ire of her family by not pushing ahead as expected. Magic is where she really differs from her relatives. Where most of her relatives relish their mastery over Death, she hates it. Her powers are too destructive to herself and others, the risks too great for a single person to bear. Every time she uses them she's gambling with the lives of her and everyone around her. As such she tries to avoid using all but the simplest of them whenever possible. This forces her to put a premium on physical combat, wielding blades and bullets before magic.

The destructive power of her magic and her abnormal appearance serve to keep Dahlia from putting herself out there unless forced by her family or someone else drags her along. Very few manage to make it happen.
Faction (Marduk, Ishtar, or Cassandra):Ishtar
Are you a Descendant of the Illuminated Poet?: Yes
Important Relations:

Jericho

Her only real friend and link to sanity, Jericho was given to her when she was child and he was a cub. He is intelligent and communicates with her telepathically.

Others TBD

Iliad City: A Magical RP in an Original World (Resuming)

Fixed Dahlia, added her to the characters tab

Iliad City: A Magical RP in an Original World (Resuming)

Moved

NEOTOKYO: State of Disarray [Open]

Whoever had supplied this intel was either a traitor or had been tortured and left for dead by the Jinrai. Either way, Kaz was going to beat the entire intelligence team to death if she made it out of this alive. With a squeal of tires on pavement the APV careened towards the squad, Kaz gritting her teeth in a silent snarl as she did her damnedest to splatter the Jinrai across the sidewalk before they could reach Takai. Three of them where smart enough to throw themselves out of the way of the massive hulking slab of speeding steel but the operative carrying the DMR wasn't. His first panicked shot went wide and buried itself into the ground a ways away. The second and third snapped off one after the other, managing to tear away the side mirror and crack the bullet resistant windshield glass.

There was no fourth shot. The APV barely budged as its grill impacted the idiot's body, Kaz slamming on the breaks and jerking the wheel sideways. A bump and wet squelch and the unfortunate terrorist was feeling the weight of a small elephant crushing his bones and pulping his organs. He was dead before the car stopped skidding, being dragged another few feet under the beast of a vehicle so that he left a red smear. Even with all their military surplus weapons and gadgets, brute force and the laws of momentum could still beat out the Jinrai.

The poor bastard's comrades had to managed to recover the time the APV stopped, spraying its side with bullets. The window cracked under the first salvo, unable to stand up to heavy slugs and FMJs. The door held up much better, Kaz dropping low in her seat as she tried to figure out what to do. Her gear was in the back, a minigun simply not able to fit up front. Even if she was able to climb through to get to it without being filled with lead she couldn't exactly fire the damn thing from inside a car. Not without going permanently deaf at least. She hadn't bothered carrying a sidearm, a stupid mistake she would not be repeating that was for sure. So that left her with one option: go absolutely fucking insane.

She hated doing this, Kaz sweeping some of the glass shards from her hair as she rested her boots on the door, waiting for her moment. The intermittent firing died down, the metallic sound of dropped magazines against the ground letting her know that the hit team was reloading. Judging by the sound of footsteps they were getting closer as well. Perfect. Kaz took hold of her left wrist with her right hand, breathing heavily as she tried to steel herself. The first couple of second where always the worst but after that it was manageable. She could handle it. She twisted her wrist nearly 180 degrees, the metal hinges that allowed her to do so sending a signal to the injection system connected to her heart and brain. There was a brief chill, like her blood had been replaced with ice water, and she swore she could heart her heart pumping faster and faster. The synthetic coils of her muscles tensed up like snake waiting to strike. And in less than a second that brief moment of deadly calm was replaced by an explosion of black rage.

A roar ripped from Kaz's throat as she kicked the door off its hinges, the thing knocking one of the thugs to the ground. She was on the other two before they could even react. They weren't even human to her anymore, just fleshy targets that needed to be stomped or shot or crushed until they were unrecognizable piles of mush. The first victim she got her hands on hadn't even managed to finished loading his rifle, fumbling it incompetently as a gloved fist shattered his skull in a single blow. Kaz kept punching, two, three and four more hits raining down on his face within seconds, ruining any semblance he had of being a person. Kaz hated how they would try and trick her, how they would scream and gurgle incoherently for mercy through shattered teeth and torn lips. They were nothing but mulch and she would make them mulch, break them into pieces and scatter them!

With a grunt she she shifted her position and tossed the dying man at his friend who was still standing, using the distraction to close the distance and wrap her hands around his neck. There was no ultra-violent outburst this time, the hot blooded instinctual need for violence having died down to be replaced by a cold hatred of anything she got her hands on. The Jinrai were all killers, no different from the terrorists she had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan and Mexico and Columbia. She would treat these ones the same as she did all the others. A quick twist of her hands and his neck was cleanly broken, just like when she had killed chickens and rabbits for dinner on her grandmothers farm.

And then there was one. The final Jinrai managed to struggle to his feet, holding his ribs where the door had broken them. In his free hand was a knife, nothing fancy or high tech. Just 8 inches of sharpened steel that was perfect for tearing into soft flesh. He was holding it like an ice pick, lunging forward to stab down at Kaz. The attempt was swiftly blocked, the raging bear catching his hand and breaking every bone in it with a single squeeze. Before he even had time to scream Kaz slammed his head against the APV, denting the hood and stilling his movement.

The fight was over. She had won.

Kaz was covered in bits of glass and bone and flecked with blood, a look that was sadly not unfamiliar to her. The career soldier scooped up one of the empty rifles from the ground and snagged a magazine from the vest of the man who's neck she had broken, rushing towards the house to assist in the apprehension (or more likely the killing) of the suspect. She hadn't taken more than two steps when the building and the one next to it erupted into twin balls of dust and debris, whatever explosives that had just been set off unleashing a whirlwind of shrapnel. There was no time to admire the sight, Kaz's training and experience in the Middle East sending her toppling to the ground with her legs crossed and her ears covered. Bits of metal and wood rained down on her, piercing through her light armor and embedding themselves in her, each one a searing needle digging just under her skin. When the awful rain ended Kaz stood up on shaky legs and turned to look at the scene.

It was like she was back on patrol in Kabul. Car alarms blared over the dismal sound of the moans of the dying, mothers dragging themselves through the wreckage in a desperate final attempt to find their babies. Mere inches from her foot was a child's arm, coated white with plaster except for the end where it had been severed. The dark red blood leaking from it was a morbidly entrancing contrast to the dirty grey of the sidewalk, Kaz kicking it aside as she went to retrieve Takai. A couple of minutes ago none of this would have been a problem to her, but the combat drugs were wearing off, the haze of battle-fueled hatred giving way to tired revulsion.

Takai was only half buried, Kaz lifting away heaps of drywall and broken beams. She half expected everything below his waist to be gone but he was only missing a good chunk of his leg. Lucky him. Stripping off one of her gloves she checked his pulse.

Slow, but still there.

Kaz was no medic but she knew the basics. The wound needed to be disinfected and tied off, medics could take care of the rest. With a gentleness that didn't fit her imposing size or rough demeanor she scooped her comrade from the rubble and carried him off to the APV. The back had a first aid kit, enough antiseptic and bandages to keep the injury clean. Kaz did what she could, picking away debris and disinfecting the jagged gash before wrapping it in bandages. All there was left to do was call it in.

She tried to prepare herself for the call, tried to keep as calm as possible to preserve some semblance of professionalism. That was a failure from the beginning, Kaz screaming at the top of her lungs as soon as the channel was open.

"It is Bykov here, Takai is wounded and not responding. There was a trap, lots of collat-collater- colla, oh fuck it!" She switched into her native tongue, relying on the presence of someone who could speak English on the other side. "It's Kaz, the whole situation is absolutely fucked! Whatever son of a bitch gave you the intel on this shitshow in the Exclusion Zone is a fucking traitor, you walked us right into a goddamn ambush! The building was rigged to blow and I count at least four dead civilians and there's probably more. Get medics over here now damnit! And tell the fucking morons in Intelligence that I hope they all fucking choke to death!"

Was that childish and likely to damage her relationship with the team? Yes. Did she give a shit? Not in the least. Within ten minutes the medics had arrived, loading Takai into the field ambulance and covering the bodies. The news wasn't far behind, the vultures circling the carnage to try and get an explosive quote, a picture, a live feed for the world to see just how effective the brave and noble NSF was at combating the threat of the Jinrai.

Without saying a word Kaz packed up and started walking. She would make it back to base eventually.

---------

If there was one thing Daiyu hated it was people with overblown senses of self-worth and slaves to traditional forms of address. Well that was two things but it seemed Suicidal Seo fit the bill for both. She didn't break eye contact with him until he dead, listening quietly as he lived up to the stereotypes about Korean rage. "As you wish. Forgive me Kamenashi-san. I didn't mean to cause any offense, and I certainly didn't mean to imply you need any babying."

You uncontrollable incompetent idiot, you need someone to hold your hand as you cross the street to make sure you don't die trying to backflip over a speeding car.

The notion of training not killing him was almost laughable. Training shouldn't be lethal, but his idea of a good workout was catching a bullet in the back. "I'm almost always free in the morning. Perhaps we can cross swords tomorrow if you're available?"Seo would be an interesting one to face. He was undeniably talented, but also undeniably reckless and foolhardy. What was the point of fancy flips and twists when your enemy would be on solid ground? Daiyu would enjoy knocking him back to Earth.

She listen to Ashton cautiously, taking a sip of her tea as he apologized for his "unprofessional" (obnoxious brown-nosing) behavior and brought up Kazonkova. The half-Russian, half-American mercenary with the anger management issues, Daiyu had exchanged a few words with her but couldn't claim to know much more than her previous occupation. "Ms.Bykov, yes. A tragic story to be sure, but just how much research have you done? Has there been any similar cases to hers? If I recall correctly the system that caused it was a prototype that she later modified herself, so it's unlikely to find someone who's gone through the same thing. And how wouldn't part of her brain have to be removed and then replaced? Wouldn't that affect her memory or bodily functions adversely?"

Did Ashton really care about Kaz at all, or was this just a ploy to make himself look good? Either way, she'd play along for now.

"I apologize for all the questions Hyuga-kun but business tends to make people analytical and make inquries everything. If you'd permit me one more, do you have a rough estimate on the amount of money needed? You're asking three of the wealthiest people on the planet so I believe it's fair."

Chris seemed fun at least, genuinely taking an interest in Margo and not being an immediate stick in the mud. Sure he was disheveled and a little boorish but that was a million times better than stuffy and uptight. "I see a flatterer joins our ranks. Well never let it be said that I can't be swayed by compliments. I am Daiyu Li, but please call me Daiyu. Titles, ranks and honorifics make me feel old."

She tittered quietly, only to notice that Chelsea's tears. Without a word she produced a handkerchief from one of the inner pockets of her kimono, extending it to the bolt-on bimbo with a kind smile. "Do you need to take a moment Chelsea?"

@LetMeDoStuff @Letter Bee @MK2 @silvermist1116 @Landaus Five-One

NEOTOKYO: State of Disarray [Open]

The Exclusion Zone. Kaz's mother had almost ended up patrolling here back during those terrifying weeks and months after the bomb dropped. How different would her life had been if she come to Japan when she was 12? Maybe she would have seen war for the senseless carnage it was and decided to go to college, become an engineer and pioneered the first true cybernetic augmentations. She could have done it too. She had achieved mild fame as a teen for her achievements in the field, had been offered full rides to a number of schools. She could have made something great, gone done in history and gotten medical schools named after her. But she didn't. She allowed herself to get suckered into the trap of blind patriotism against her mother's wishes and lost any chance she had of making something of herself. Kaz tightened her grip on the, grinding her teeth as she waited for a reply. The awkward silence was making her wish she hadn't even bothered trying to be social. Why did she put effort into being a normal person if she knew it was just going to fall flat?

Bykov eased up a little when Takai finally answered, cursing quietly to herself as she missed a turn. "No you don't."She grunted in response. "Or at least you should not wish that. Serving overseas changes people for worse and not better, most of the time. You do things that are not good to people who may or not be not good for a cause that is not important." Not too dissimilar to the NSF really but she knew better than to tell her partner that. "Being a policeman isn't bad. It's good you have meaning again."

Carefully Kaz doubled back on herself, managing to snake the APV through a back alley and back onto the right path. "When I was in Afghanistan and Iraq, sometimes I would go on patrol. When we would be called to a village there would be unrest because people didn't like us. My friends carried rifles and I had the machine gun. Bu we would get out of our car and the first thing we unholstered were our pistols and machetes. They are execution weapons so people got scared when we brought them out. I remember one boy looked me in the eye when I did that. He did not say a word but he did back away and left. Later we were going a house and arrested his father. The son reached for a knife and I threatened to blow his father's head off. He stopped."

She didn't really have a reason for sharing that story. Maybe she had intended to show him what she had had to do to survive. Maybe she just needed to vent. The why didn't matter anymore, she had shared her story and it was up to Takai to interpret whatever meaning he could from it. She needed at the mention of the tea party, drumming her fingers against the wheel as she fumed. Kaz pulled to stop in front of one of the many shabby tenements that lined the Exclusion Zone, down a ways from the suspect's house. "Fuck them. There is more important work they could be doing. The NSF does not get what it pays for."That was about all she had to say on the subject, coasting the APV to a stop down a few building from the target's house.

She gave Takai a nod at the order, switching on her camera feed and giving him a silent thumbs up. Usually she preferred to work in teams for this kind of thing but Takai was the cop after all. She was content to sit and wait for him until he needed her, or she was until another car pulled up mere moments after he stepped inside. It was nothing special, a white van that was more than a little weather-worn, but the person who stepped out of the driver's sit was. Kaz switched on her mic and took a second look to confirm the identity before calling in to Takai. "The target has just arrived outside, she is about to enter after you."

The situation should have been resolved before it had even started. Takai was inside and already on the alert, she would be taken completely by surprise. But when four armed men wearing body armor hopped out of the van things got a little more unpredictable. Kaz counted two assault rifles, one shotgun and one DMR, all military grade and all aimed at the doorway. This was an ambush, the Jinrai had set them up. "Four more, all armed, waiting outside!"

Takai didn't have surprise on his side anymore. The one advantage he did have was that it was only supposed to be him present. The Jinrai operatives wouldn't be expecting back up. There was no way Kaz would be able to make it out of the car and grab her gear in time, she would need to use the weapon she was already sitting. With a twist of a key the APV rumbled back to life, Kaz stomping on the gas pedal and tearing off towards the opposition with a squeal of tires.

-----------

"Oh of course you will." Daiyu agreed amicably. "Forgive me, I shouldn't have assumed."The businesswoman's smile didn't falter even as Ashton flashed a shit-eating grin of his own, wondering if she had been this insufferable at his age. "Bold question Hyuga-kun, bold question indeed. My taste is expensive, more than you can afford if that's what your asking." She let her grin fade into a wry ghost of a smile, waving away her answer with the fan. "I'm joking of course. In truth my taste in men and women matters very little. I work anywhere from 60 to 90 hours a week, not counting my duties for the NSF. It would be something of a wasted effort trying to find someone who can keep up with that." She didn't feel compelled to explain that those hours were split between managing legitimate stock portfolios and keeping all manner of illegal operations in play.

As Ashton continued to prattle on Daiyu was almost impressed. There was a certain quality about the way he played at being a cute kid and a clever conversationalist. Maybe it was the sheer cheek of it. Either way, if he thought being a horny teen was going to make him likable then he was welcome to continue. She'd wear her mask and let him prance around in his until he got too close. "Please, you flatter me." she demurred. "I simply want to helpmy home protect itself against an insidious internal threat as thanks for all it's given me."

Did this asshole just use the word Freudian?

He had indeed, but his grandiose words revealed a hunger for status that Daiyu was very familiar with. Perhaps he'd be a thread she could tug on later to help her unravel her problems. She glanced at the laserdisk curoiusly, taking it with a gracious nod. "I'll make sure to have my staff give it a look then. Thank you Ashton."

Greedy little bastard.

Turning back to Chelsea Daiyu gave the younger socialite an approving nod, using a single metal finger to stir her tea a bit more. "I know the place yes but I'm afraid I've never visited it. Clearly I'll have to change that." No matter what other qualities you could ascribe to her (airheaded, bimbo, drunkard, better suited to being a strip club waitress, the list went on) she did have good taste in kimonos. "Elegant and beautiful, your clothes match their owner it seems." The name Unicomm 8000 Total Protection was promptly filed away in her memory to have someone look into and the rest of the valley girl's words ignored. The other American and his working girl boy thing were busying smoking themselves to death, Daiyu noticing with some distaste just where Margo produced that lighter from. Switching into perfect English for the time being the con artist gave Chris a winning smile and spoke to him. "Welcome to the NSF Chris. I look forward to getting to know you better." And she did. Whatever "incidents" Ashton was talking intrigued her. Whether they were true or not didn't matter, rumors could often be just as revealing.

"And Margo darling, I didn't forget about you. Your sense of style is striking as always, you need to share tips with me! In fact you and I are going to schedule a shopping trip sometime, my treat. And I'm not going to hear any arguments about it!" There was absolutely nothing about Margo's fashion she liked but those on the outskirts of society tended to be the easiest to manipulate.

"Seo, something tells me that that little warning we got this morning had to do with you.” She had switched back to Japanese, her voice one of near motherly concern. “We all respect your dedication but please consider taking it a little easier from now on? Who else in here is going to give me a decent sword fight if you die?"

@LetMeDoStuff @GoreLore @Landaus Five-One @Letter Bee @MK2 @silvermist1116

NEOTOKYO: State of Disarray [Open]

Takai didn't seem to be in any rush to drive so Bykov took the lead, doing one final check of all her gear before staring the engine. What was the point of not having any identifying markings on a vehicle if it was going to be the most conspicuous thing on the road anyway? Any idiot could see that it wasn't just some adrenaline junkie's modified offroader, it was too big, too imposing. With it's top mounted lights and solid black paint job it would have looked more at home running over protesters in the streets than going for a leisurely cruise. It reminded Kaz of the Humvees and JLVTs she had used to negotiate the mountains and plains of Afghanistan, all it was missing was the hatch mount for her minigun and a different coat of paint. Really this whole "shadow war" reminded of her time in country. She had done the same house to house clearing there that she was doing here, a foreigner coming in to tear apart family homes in search of hidden weapons and terrorists that may or may not have even existed.

If she closed her eyes for long enough she could still go back to Bagram Air Base. She had spent enough hours sitting there that she could picture the blankets on her bunk, smell the sewage from the main city of Bagram baking in the one hundred plus degree heat. There had been no escape it, the odor of food trash, offal, and human waste creeping under doors and through cracked windows, just fermenting as fans pushed around humid air. It was the first thing she had noticed when she got off the C-130 that took her there, her nose wrinkling as she was greeted by her new squad. You got used to it they had told her, and they had lied. You could never truly get used it, you simply tuned it out as best you could. Sometimes it would come back to her while she was eating and it was all she could do to keep from throwing up.

"The edge of the Southern Exclusion zone, Estate 19. I understand." The APV lurched out of it's spot, Kaz having never been especially lightfooted in vehicles of any kind, and up the ramp out of headquarters and into the light of day. With one hand lightly resting on the wheel the bear of a woman guided her beast of a vehicle past the checkpoints and into NeoTokyo proper. There was a good bit of road to cover to get to the Exclusion Zone, plenty of time for her demons to catch up with her if she let them. To stave off the memories Kaz opted to make inane small talk, no matter how bad at it she was. "Takai, where you ever in the military overseas?"She had never asked about his service record but the encounters with the pathetically unqualified Margo and the dangerously inept Chelsea had placed the question fresh in her mind.

-----------------

Now things had gotten interesting. Margo and the disheveled American were an "intriguing" sight to be sure, looking more like a sex tourist in the red light district and his escort of dubious age than a pair of investigators given the power to kill by the Japanese government, but they might as well have not existed at all once Chelsea entered the garden. Chelsea Riley O'Connell, heir to the Halifax Company and unknowing participant in an underworld power struggle. The father of the girl she had gotten killed, Hattori Akechi had been a major figure in the Yakuza at one point before the Daichi family ousted him with the help of the Yamaguchi-gumi, and the man who had owned her during her tenure as a strip club waitress was in deep with the Yamaguchi as well. In fact, his father was Hattori's right hand man and a Yakuza mole, reporting on everything that went on.

And Daiyu knew all of this because she was at the center of it. The Guarri Ace strip club was one of the fronts she used to launder money and one of the places she knew could always be called on to entertain some of her more prestigious clients or dispose of a body or two. It was one of the linchpins of her web, important enough that if Nobunaga ever stepped down or was killed it would pass directly into her possession. It was not for sale and never would be. So when she found out Chelsea had managed to get a position in the NSF she had taken notice, watching her like a hawk whenever possible. Of course, it wasn't polite to stare so Daiyu had to settle for listening in on her conversations and taking note of her movements but that was alright. She was nothing if not observant. "Chelsea, looking lovely as always. Such a gorgeous kimono, you have to tell me where you got it!" If she looked back through her notes she'd probably figure it out herself, it wasn't hard to track the movements of a buxom blonde Californian through the capital of Japan.

Ashton was making a fool of himself as was to be expected of a sixteen year old boy, "discreetly" eyeing up his comrades and pestering them with tales of his skills. Insufferable yes, but a potential problem she would be careful to avoid. There was a good reason her computer, tablets and phones were kept in shielded bags. His story about hacking the NSF sounded like typical teen bullshit but he had been hired after all. Out of everyone besides Chelsea she would have to keep the closet eye on him, make sure he didn't need to be bribed, bullied, blackmailed, seduced or shot.

For now she could settle for having some fun with him.

"It's so nice to see such a sweet young man with an interest in politics!" she cooed, giving Ashton her best "Aren't you adorable?" look. "Intelligent and brave enough to join the NSF, you'll make the girls very happy!" Her cybernetic arm dug into a well concealed pocket of her kimono and retrieved a folding fan, Daiyu spreading it in front of her face to conceal her light laugh. She wondered if he would pick up on the secondary meaning, watching him even as she sipped her tea.