The daughter of former Field Marshal Aura Swanepole, Leonore was born shortly after the end of the First Arcanotech War. Le- onore never met her father, only knowing that he had died in the last days of the war. Growing up in her mother’s shadow, it was always expected that she would serve in the New Earth Government military. The young Swanepole never wanted to be given special treatment for being her mother’s daughter and vol- unteered for the nascent Engel training program. Since she was paired with her Engel, Leonore has proven to everyone around her that she is a strong and capable woman.
Athletically built and well-tanned, Leonore’s greatest moment was when her mother was forced to resign her command. The lieutenant is estranged from the former Field Marshal, and has never known how to fit in except through over-confidence and bravado.
Virtue/Flaw: Driven/Insecure Experience: Experienced
Noteworthy Attributes: Agility 8, Perception 8
Noteworthy Skills: Armed Fighting: Adept, Dodge: Expert, Fight- ing: Expert (Focused in Engel Fighting), Marksman: Expert (Fo- cused in Engel Marksman), Observation: Adept, Stealth: Expert, Surveillance: Adept
Noteworthy Qualities: Code (2), Damaged, Duty, Engel Synthesis Interface
The Widow skittered to a stop on the rooftop, quieter than a giant humanoid spider-thing should be. Black chitin melted back into flesh, mandibles retreated back into teeth, and Roy Romer immediately unholstered his 15mm CS-44 Enforcer. With him, if it wasn’t one weapon, it was another.
He crouched down next to his friends. “Looks like it’s con- tained to the building. Intel seems solid.”
Next to him, a young man who one would lose in a snowstorm nodded. “If my source is right, they should be setting their explosives as we speak,” added Mesta.
“Man, this is ridiculous.” Sorena looked like a movie star going for a jog hoping the paparazzi were waiting. “Why would the Corporation want to stir up this kind of hornet’s nest?”
“This sort of thing is only what we get to see. Imagine what other strings they’re pulling,” responded the White.
The Nazzadi took a sip of his energy drink – Turkey-Berry Blast. “But the Office of Infernal Spite? That’s playing with fire. We don’t even play with that kind of fire.” “Yes, but we’re not a multinational corporation with money and influence up the yang.” Roy habitually checked his clip. “I don’t know how you can drink that stuff.”
“What? It’s like Thanksgiving in a can.” Sorena, whose blood red eyes had never left the streets below, smirked. “And just in case anyone was wondering, they’re all fair game. If it ain’t a D-bag, it’s mystically capable and 100% Child of Chaos.”
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Roy stood up and holstered his pistol. “Good news. We’d better get down there and take them out before those explosives get too set.” Once again the black chitin came and Romer was the thing they called Thresh, crouched to jump across to the neighboring rooftop.
“Hey man, remember to save me one of the squishy guys.” Sorena’s smile suddenly turned terribly cruel. “I’ll have ques- tions for the lucky win- ner afterwards.” The gi- ant bat-like wings had already begun to sprout from his back. Soon, the tall bloodthirsty mon- strosity they called In- cubus leaped into the air. Mesta simply stepped out over thin air and walked across. “Show-offs.”
• • • • •
Like all of their surprise attacks, it was only sur- prise until Incubus got overzealous and needed to kill things.
Fortunately, the Children of Chaos hadn’t sent a kill-team to wire a build- ing to explode. There were a few Dhohanoid special- ists, along with some hitters to keep everyone safe. Fortunately, a few Ramachese, a Namarok, and an Elib weren’t going to be enough to dissuade this crew. Mesta dropped a gravity well the minute the fighting broke out for real and it went downhill from there.
Unfortunately, Sorena didn’t get the still-living captive he wanted. But, truth be told, it was his own fault. He was so in the moment, he never even noticed that he’d ripped both the arms off the para-psychic and beaten the sorcerer to death with them.
C’est la vie.
• • • • •
Roy came in from dragging another body out back. Sorena, still the Vampire, loaded the parts of one of three bodies
that were left into a plain black trash bag. Mesta refused to touch the bodies physically, so he used his telekinesis instead, making a ‘yuck’ face as he did.
Roy moved to deal with the last corpse, one that was hand- ily already in a cocoon of his own making. “Okay, we’ve got another three minutes before the guys they were meeting show up and about a minute past that before that tip that went in brings the OIS down around all our necks.”
Sorena shifted back to his Nazzadi form and tied off the bag. “Dude, that’s a lot of blood. Don’t think they’ll no- tice and freak?”
Mesta chortled out loud. “Maybe you should have thought of that before you boiled it all out of their veins and all over the floor. And the windows. And the walls.”
“Don’t forget the ceiling,” added Sorena. “That’ll keep ‘em guessing.”
The three began to drag their grim cargo out of the building and into the back alley. Fortunately, they’d already shot out all of the lights over the last few days, so it was under the cover of darkness.
Roy dropped the cocooned cadaver from his shoulder. “The point was to save the federal agents that were walking into a death trap, not to give them a cushy arrest with every- thing spelled out for them. They’re going to live, so we’ve done our job.”
A nearby access cover wiggled its way out of the ground, sliding across the concrete. An inhuman head with a mon- strous mouth exited first. The rest of the Echo Tager fol- lowed, along with another.
Roy walked over. “Sorry to make you crawl through the sewers, guys. Take ‘em away, but make it fast. Trouble’s on the way.” The trio made their way out of the alley while the Echoes dragged the bodies below ground, ostensibly to dump them in the bay.o
“We have some interesting friends,” said Mesta, wiping off his hands. “And why are we cleaning this up anyways?” “We don’t want the Corporation to know we’re helping out. This way, it could be any number of nasty characters in the arcane underground. It’ll be a question instead of a sure- thing. If they figure out we’re helping, it’ll only get worse,” answered Roy.
Hitting the sidewalk and walking at a brisk pace in the op- posite direction from the bloody building, Sorena chuckled. “After all this time running from the Office of Internal Security, here we are.”
“Seems natural,” said Mesta. “We’re all on the same team, right?”
Roy got that grim stare he so often got. “Why don’t you shift and try telling them that.”