Sophie Storm

The Farsighter

Sophie Storm

Player: @RoseBride

Dockside, Port Oaks, the Rogue Isles.

It was a miserably rainy night in the sprawling portion of town forever called Dockside by its inhabitants. The shadow of Fort Hades loomed close and only those whom where up to no good would have ever considered coming out in any weather to this particular part of town. As you slog your way through the streets you see before you the stone faced building just ahead with its darkened windows and the dark alley leading to the real doorway guarded only by one man, dead and tacked to the wall by his own blade.

As you approach the door, the eyes of the dead man follow you, or seem to, and as your hand balls into a tight fist to knock three times upon the door the corpses mouth slowly opens and beginning to moan the dead mans hand reaches out for you. Thankful you are when the gorilla of a man, sour faced with a sloping protruding forehead lets you in out of the cold, cold rain and the garish and bloody night.

You had come to this place in search of this fabled gunfighter, the merciless witch and gunslinger whom you where told managed terrible feats of stunning accuracy and practiced a form of necromancy so barbarous as to make any assassination she decided to take a sure bet but who's demand for payment was told to come with a horrific cost. No mark she took would remain alive this was fact most assuredly given and no one better at obtaining and coercing information from any person living or dead. All would sing and die like the ill fated zombified canary that was rumored she kept with her at her side.

The white haired stranger sat with her back to the wall, her head was bowed a black duster of a hat was pulled low, where above a pair of dark government issue sunglasses a pair of storm grey eyes arrest you with their vivid ferocity. She leans forward when you approach taking her booted heels from off the table directly before her. As you take your seat in front of her, the bright yellow little bird hops toward you which had but a moment ago been eating from out of her hand. Now it stands on the table before you blinking at you with beady eyes, its beak stained with blood. The creature begins to warble and then to sing a melancholy song stopping only when she holds up a hand for silence when you begin to ask her name.

Her voice is soft and sibilant like the sound silk makes when it passes over leather, there was an odd lilt to her words which bespoke a place far away and the dark tan told of foreign lands where the sun was a harsh glare and not of this stormy island place. There was a slow fluidity to her limbs each placed with a deliberate grace like the most dangerous snake or skilled dancer. She took off her hat and running a small hand through ghostly white hair she sets her hat upon the table between you and slinging a leather clad arm across the back of her chair she studies you with cool deliberation.

You tell her of your goal, the target which you seek, her gaze remains impassively calm. She reaches out to the small silver lighter and the matching cigarette case which is set to one side on the table before her, between the canary to her left and the wide brimmed hat to her right. She flips the case open and revealing a row of hand rolled sweet smelling cheroot cigarillo's the scent of rich tobacco, sandalwood and clove thick and cloying to ones senses. She snaps the case shut after offering you one, a polite gesture for one who seems so removed from all things civilized. She shrugs as you decline or leaning forward she holds the small lighter before you setting the end of your cigarillo alight.

She hears you out, listening to your long tale, your plight, your self deluded reasoning for seeking her out to kill a man. She listens with keen observation and interest to the details which you pour forth all in hopes of finding the one you seek. You can not help wondering why you told her so much, opening up to this stranger like she was a long trusted friend or loved one.

Could it be she had soft and kindly face, beautiful in a Mediterranean way really? Was it the expression of her lips which seemed always smiling or the earnestness in her wintery eyes which showed that she was truly listening? No none of these things where right, you could almost place your finger upon it the reason for your confessions, and there it sat seemingly harmless in her hand, the cigarette case showed your reflection in its polished face. The simple spell she had woven had entranced you, the one who sat before her loosening your tongue to show your real self and motivation the real reflection of the one whose image was caught in its gleaming silver surface.

When she asks if you are aware of the price of her services, you hesitate here, still caught in the knowledge of her simple though effective witch craft. She gives you a soft charming throaty laugh and a cocky smile, one that adds a devilish gleam to her silver eyes. She leans forward intimately before you her leather jacket opening to give you a most interesting sight. In several holsters strapped about her body are various instruments, guns of all makes and models, knives, all deadly shapes and sizes, a stun baton, three small black thin packages, two bandolier's filled with strangely carved bullets and nestled neatly between her breasts having fallen free from her simple black T-shirt a silver snowflake medallion at its center a sapphire as blue as morning skies.

Her voice startles you, she catches you staring, the silvery strands of her hair gleaming in the pale light of the bar. You feel you are alone here only the two of you, your senses dulled lulled by her soft words spoken for only your ears to hear them. "My payment is simple beyond the sum you discussed with my agent I demand payment in spirit as well as in blood. The one whom you seek may be used in payment or another may be substituted but know this I will have my due even if it is your blood and your soul which I keep. Do you agree?"

You give an almost imperceptible nod and she leans back seemingly pleased.

"The girl I was then was sweet, naive, trusting…": the stranger paused taking a long drag off her hand rolled cheroot, inhaling deeply the bullets and knives on her chest shining dully in the somber light. Full lips parting to exhale the fragrant smoke from her lungs like unto a dragon a long ribbon of smoke filling your eyes transporting you back in time to see through her eyes and live through her limbs her voice guiding you back with her.

"I was born Sophia Louise Storm, Sophia the name chosen by my mother, Louise my great grandmothers name who did not survive the second world war, and Storm the name my German soldier of a grandfather had chosen when he had gone into deep hiding so many years ago." The stranger speaks softly a wry smile curling her lips as her cold gray eyes drift before your own. "My birth and upbringing was an oddity indeed, I was born on the Gaza strip, the border between Gaza and the state of Israel. The daughter of a proud Jewish family who had come to the land of Isaac shortly after world war two had ended in 1948 to build the new Zion to make of it the home and to realize the promises to our forefathers of times past."

"My fathers' family was not so prodigious or so proud, and with great reason. My Grandfather had been a high ranking German Official during the Second World War. A doctor by trade and his bloodline pure, for in all the photographs my father kept of him he was a tall figure of a man, slight but with hair as white as my own, his eyes the color of winter skies and a coldness of expression which caused me as a child to shudder."

"He had done quite well for himself in Hitler's Germany. Father told me that the doctor, or so he was always called even by his children and his wife, was a strict and guarded man to distant to get to know. Secretive and almost never home, he had lead a life of influence during his time in Berlin keeping a house in Austria filled with the confiscated finery and servants only one of the Reich elite could afford."

"My father had grown up with a governess and later on at a prestigious all boys school high in the French Alps. The funding of which had been paid for, my father later found out, by the life savings which his father had stolen from the very same people he would later sully his fathers Aryan heritage by marrying into."

"The Doctor however was a sickly man; he was always announced by his dry hacking cough which would shake his narrow shoulders and when he would take his handkerchief away from his mouth it was almost always dotted with blood. The doctors of the time called it consumption and in the end it had been this illness and not the crime tribunals which had ended his long life at last."

"I grew up during the mid to late nineties in Jerusalem and moved with my mother, father and little brother when I was seven here to Paragon City in the spring of 2002." Exhaling a lung full of rich aromatic smoke she laughs almost too softly to be heard, "You look astonished, and so you should. You see before you a woman perhaps no more than thirty or forty and yet here we sit in present day 2010 and I tell you I am ten to twenty years younger than I could possibly be. I tell you I am not telling tales or faking my age as some older women have been known to do, I have lived a thousand life times longer than any person should, I have traveled to lands and times untouched by man and have found secrets better left undisturbed…but let me continue" she said, holding up her gloved hand for quiet, "there will be plenty of time for explanations as I go along."

"My father had been given an important contract with this City shortly before the first Rikti invasion. Indeed in those days even after the invasion Astoria was untouched by most of the crime and violence which plagued the rest of the city They where planning on building a new science facility for the Astoria University and my father had been excited to transplant myself and my brother to a nice American school where my mother would not have to fear stray bullets from the fighting which always existed where we lived for so very long."

Leaning back in her chair she crosses long leather bound legs, either from the drug like delirium her spell had cast upon you or the fact that you had trouble seeing with all the visions which passed over your eyes but her legs seemed to long, longer than most runway models and you wonder if when she stood up would she reach the ceiling. Contemplating on how very much like Alice you feel, lost in this witch created wonderland you slip back into the vision of the small airy apartment overlooking the streets teaming with life in what used to be Astoria.

The Apartment

You stand in little Sophie's shoes, white blond hair in a loose ponytail falling past her shoulders. A bright pink backpack almost as big as herself, a pink and white leotard and too too ensemble and a brand new pair of black ballerina slippers tied carefully and fitting snugly to her small feet. The morning sun casting a brilliant and hazy glow over the yellow upholstered furniture of the living room, the walls where painted a sweet butter cream, lace doily's covered the backs and arms of the over stuffed furniture.

There wasn't much style to the place but it gave the impression of a home well loved and well lived in. A toddler maybe one or two years old played on the carpet near by nomming his toys gleefully while ten tiny little fingers and toes flexed open and closed in satisfied delight. Sophie stood little face pressed against the window pane blowing hot breath against the cold glass drawing symbols in the fog and looking beyond it to the bustling streets outside.

Sugar Maples lined the street, cars didn't even honk their horns, women jogged by pushing babies in strollers and men walked their dogs. It was a beautiful autumn day in Astoria, children where inside getting ready for school, fathers, husbands and boyfriends kissed their loved ones good bye, mothers handed out lunches, filled vans for carpool and remembered dentist appointments. The sun was shining and the outlook for the day was bright in Sophies mind.

Today was her big dance recital, and her father had promised he would be there to watch her dance.

As she stood before the window practicing her battement developpe and then her attitude pose before her mother burst into the room her cell phone pressed against one ear as she scooped up her little brother Devin who began to cry from being swept up so startlingly from his toys on the floor. Jillian Storm was a breath taking Israeli beauty of a woman, with a thin straight nose, thick black hair skin the color of almonds and eyes the color of river stones. It was no wonder her father had defied his father and his fortune to marry her.

However Jillian was forgetful, scatter brained, paranoid and irresponsible. She often forgot to pick Sophie up after school, left Devin in shopping carts and wandered away from him to try on shoes. She was forever accusing her husband of cheating on her and she had a quick and vicious temper. It wasn't to unheard of for Jillian to be heard screaming at her father through closed doors and for the sound of shattering dishes and breaking vases to interrupt Sophies late night dreams. However Jillian was all in all a good mother, no more than seventeen when she had had Sophie she and Reg had gotten married, and now at only twenty seven Jillian Storm still acted like the seventeen year old dancer whom Reginald Storm had found so alluring only seven years ago that May.

However with all her beauty and mental deficiencies Jillian did manage to keep a good home. She was a stay at home mother; she had an easy laugh and a contagious smile. She could light up a room where ever she went and was an exciting woman to be around. She was always talking about some new fad or designer, in fact Jillian was always talking. To herself on the phone to strangers behind the counter Jillian's passion was for talking and shopping.

This is just what her mother had planned for the day, as she spoke to her friend Kathleen from across the Hall about the big blow out sale going off at Fredricks of Hollywood that day and how the two women would meet for lunch there after. Sophie found her mothers materialism boring and was glad she would be in school all day rather than stuck in a department store somewhere watching her mother try on shoes while she tended to Devin. So after getting shoved into Jackets and hats, sweaters and little mittens for Devin all three set off on their merry way, Sophie remembering to shut and lock the door behind her mother whom always forgot.

After being deposited to daycare and school for the day the rest of the day passed uneventfully, that was until around three o'clock. Sophie was sitting on the steps in front of her school, she had been waiting for Jillian to pick her up for nearly fifteen minutes, or so her bratz watch told her. She tapped her toes and whistled through the space in her missing front tooth which the fairy had given her three dollars for only last week.

She tried not to get anxious as she knew if she was late to the recital Madame would come and find her and pick her up as she sometimes did whenever Jillian didn't bother to show up however Jillian had known how important the recital was to her and above all else dancing was as important to the mother as well as to her daughter and Jillian would not have forgotten her this time.

A few more minutes pass and Sophie deciding as little children are want to do sometimes not to await the arrival of some forgetful adult who was charged to take care of them. Forty five minutes had elapsed since the last ring of the school bell and young Sophie storm wouldn't be late thanks to her mother again.

So up she stood smoothing down her too too and kicking leaves off of her ballerina slippers she set off down the street. It was a beautiful day still all excepting the thick cloud cover which slithered across bisecting streets. Sophie thought to herself how funny it was to see Old Mrs. Wasniack trying to hug and kiss Merl the grocery clerk from the shop-rite and she didn't blame him for screaming for help as Mrs Wasniack was doing it all wrong gnashing her fake teeth in young Merls face, but Sophie went on happily oblivious to the horror which dawned around her.

Sophie knew the way to Madame Tulleries dance studio and salon, she had biked there with Jillian in the summer after playing on the school playground for a few hours. However her memory was spotty on how long the trip had been and it occurred to her now as her little feet and legs began to hurt that what she needed was a bike.

As she turned from one street to another, the thick blanket of fog closing up the street behind her Sophie spotted a little girls bicycle lying on its side not far from the road. The streamers where pink, purple and blue and there was even a Barbie doll riding shotgun in the little wicker basket attached to the handlebars in front. Sophie picked it up and looked around for its owner, but no little girls where in sight.

Considering the bike as public transportation, Sophie set the Barbie on the near by window ledge of the deli behind her (while above Sophie's eye level the inside of the window was washed in a spray of blood and gore a hand slides down smearing the blood before disappearing to the floor) and jauntily mounting the bike she takes off with a ring of her new bell.

Coming upon her fist intersection Sophie stopped and waited for the light, little hands clasped primly before her waiting for the little man to blink on again when she was suddenly grabbed painfully by her upper arm. Squealing in fright she tried to run but instead she was forcibly turned around.

It was Jillian.

"Sophie! Thank god you're alright!" Jillian said bending low and giving her daughter a tight squeeze. Devin was cradled tightly in her arms and looked like he had been crying. There was a bandage on her mothers arm taped up with white gauze and medical tape and dark circles under her beautiful blue green eyes.

Dragging Sophie from off her newly acquired bike Jillian was about to step out into the street when a speeding car whizzes by nearly taking the small family along with the lamp post as it screeched around the corner and disappeared into the rolling fog.

"Good god!' Jillian screamed jumping back just in time her hand going protectively to Sophies chest keeping her firmly behind her while cradling a squalling Devin to her chest. Sophie just points to the red lighted hand which still told pedestrians to stop and then taking her mothers hand she leads her across the crosswalk when the little man turns green.

There behind them as Jillian looks over her shoulder at the scene now hidden from her daughter the car which had nearly killed them crashes into a fire hydrant, water flooding the streets as a mob of the hungry dead pour into the car while only a few stare hungrily at them as they cross the street.

While mourning the relinquished acquisition of her new bike Sophie was still glad to see Jillian, Devin was grumpy but that was probably because he hadn't had his afternoon nap as sometimes happens when Jillian dragged him along on her shopping errands to long Over all however Sophie was happy to have some company on her walk to the studio and it wasn't until after crossing several more streets did she realize that they weren't going to Madames at all.

They had just turned a corner which lead the way back to their apartment when Sophie had spotted her daddies car parked partially over the curb, the meter which he had hit having spilled shining coins all over the pavement. Sophie giggled and clapped her hands with delight with a cry of "Daddies home!" before breaking away from her mother and darting off.

"Sophie!" Jillian screams after her running as fast as she can as a horde of the undead whom where bent over the scattered entrails of what used to be their mailman look up from their meal to eye the tender Sophie shaped morsel that goes speeding by them. Their glassy eyes fix on the back of the little girl whom goes to the open car door of her fathers beige Taurus, some of them stand up from their bloody feast and begin shambling their way toward the little girl and the heart break which she has found inside. There bent over the steering wheel, a large shard of metal rebar pins the lifeless form of her father to the drivers seat, the airbag like a soggy deflated balloon spread out around him the air of the car still filled with its white dust as Sophie begins to cry.

Jillian nearly falling in the debris of broken glass and pocket change which litters the ground around her husband, and gathering Sophie up in her arms as if the girl where still a toddler she lets her cry joining in with the wails of her brother. Sobs strangled in Jillians tight throat keeping her from crying out, however the long low groan of the flesh eating beasts who slowly draw near to her and her children snap her out of her heart ache and Misery.

"C'mon" she says putting Sophie down and tugging her by the hand into the darkened foyer of their apartment building.

Helping her mother mutely push the large polished bench against the front doors of the building seemed to go by in a blur for little Sophie. Her small hands still covered in her fathers blood where she had touched his face and pushed at his chest trying to wake him up. She had had her gold fish die once but she didn't really know what dead meant until she had seen the lack of light in her fathers eyes.

Jillian didn't seem to care that her daddy was out there all alone with no one to hold his hand, he had spoken to her in whispers Jillian did not seem to hear. He stood beside Sophie looking down at her and neither Jillian nor Devin seemed to know that he was there or cared that he was all alone outside. Jillian kept crying and pacing screaming obscenities in Hebrew at the door, it was finally after they both managed to put the old steel mop handle through the handle of the double doors that Jillian calmed down and dragged Sophie and Devin up the stairs locking the door behind them.

To shocked and to young to understand what was going on around her, Sophie sat mutely holding Devin while Jillian boarded up the rooms. First she pushed the entertainment stand in front of the door and when she had seen the floating masks staring into the balcony windows glowing an eerie red she nailed the coffee and end tables over the holes. She ripped the cupboard doors from off their hinges and cried and screamed when she had hit her friend Kathleen now all covered in someone elses blood tried to push her way in through the front door with her hammer.

Their neighbors scratched and moaned at the front door for hours on end, eventually Jillian boarded up the hallway door as well sealing them off from the main entrance leaving them with just the kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms, with no way out.

Jillian had forgotten about the injury she had received, the bite from the transient whom had attacked her on her way from lunch with Kathleen that very afternoon. The strange and sick looking man whom had bitten her so savagely. The wound had not been deep so she had gone home to dress it when she saw the news.

Now as she stood over the counter preparing a bologna sandwich for Sophie she noticed the cut was still bleeding, and in fact had bled through. Swearing colorfully and ripping off the gauze Jillian turned several shades of green. The bite was infected and the infection was spreading, a black rash seemed to be spreading up her arm through her veins and the skin around the original bite looked mottled and oozed puss, and Sophie watched as her mother began to cry.

Jillian re-bandaged her wound after dousing it with as much alcohol and peroxide as she could find under their bathroom sink, and when Sophie had asked "Are you alright Mamma?" Jillian had done her best to lie to her little girl, when really Jillian was far from alright.

Slowly as the hours passed and the moaning on the street below increased, the scratching at the outer door and window on the balcony never ceased Jillian grew more and more pale, she began throwing up blood and stood in a stupor in one corner of the kitchen unable to speak. It was when the ghost of her father returned did Sophie fear to speak.

The Ghost of Reg Storm stood over his children whispering into his daughters' ear, as his wife slowly became one of the living dead. Shut in with her children while only a door to separate the kitchen from the den filled with yet more of the Zombie horde waited hungrily outside. However it was these very same whispered words which had saved Sophies life, and for a little while her brothers.

Sophie moved quietly making her way down the hall she dragged her little brother behind her until they where in their mother and fathers room at the end of the hall. Wrapping her brother safely in a blanket after she had gotten him to sleep and placing him into a laundry basket she hid him covering him with clean towels and blankets incase Mommy tried to find him he wouldn't be found so easily she crept toward the kitchen where her mother stood staring at the wall.

Moving slowly behind her mother Sophie opened the do not touch drawer and taking out one of the sharp steak knives, the ones her Daddy and Jillian had told her never to use she gripped the big handle in her little childlike chubby hand. When she had finished silently closing the drawer just as her daddy had told her to do she backed quietly out of the kitchen before accidentally bumping into the door which banged loudly against the wall.

The sudden noise awoke the beast inside her mother who turned around glass eyes ringed in blood veins like black snakes traced over her body and once beautiful face. She had chewed off her own lips and apart of her tongue and now blood and saliva oozed and spittle sprayed from her gnashing teeth as howled crazily and lunged after Sophie who ran with all the alacrity her ballerina slippered feet could carry her as the screaming horde of undead pounded on the walls and doors trying to get in, now that the Zombie that had been Jillian was on to the chase.

Sophie had tried to shut the door in her zombie mothers face but all the might and heft of a sixty pound seven year old could not out weigh the blood thirsty ravaging of a full grown Zombie. Stabbing out wildly with her duck handled steak knife apart of the set her mother had bought for Christmas the year before Sophie cried as she stabbed at the hand which had once been her mothers until it withdrew and Sophie locked the door while blood poured down the casements. With trembling hands Sophie dropped her knife and made her way to the laundry basket as Little Devin screamed from the other room.

"No! No no no!" Sophie cried, flying out the door, her too too stained with blood she went into her own and Devins room. He had followed her, as he did everywhere out of mommy and daddies bedroom and had gone into their own bedroom whose floor was still littered with toys and that where she found him now, lifeless a meal for their Zombie mother and the crows.

It was then that something whispered inside Sophie, a multitude of voices calling out at once, a power so strong it burned her mind and ate at her guts it was when the one first spoke to Sophie. It spoke to her and told her the words to say, it called on the spirits which hovered close to her always and forced them to do her bidding. It was the spirits whom flowed through her body which she gave strength. It was the voice of the one inside her head who told her to first get the knife in the guise of her father, and it was the voice of the one now which showed her how to use her gift. She could command the dead to end the unlife of the creature whom had been her mother, and all the other flesh sacks which clawed at the walls.

With a rush of blood pressure so great her sight swam red with blood and dark flowers exploded in her peripheral vision the blood stained face which had once been her mother and the heads of all the zombies in the surrounding area popped like giant brain packed water melon.

It was three days later when the troops had finally arrived on scene in that part of what is now called Dark Astoria that a squadron of Special Forces found Sophie wandering the streets. At first they had thought the little girl infected and had almost shot her but when she spoke the darkness and blood cleared from her once blue green eyes leaving them silvery gray like winter skies and she cried out for her Mommy.

June 8th 2002 Base Camp Alpha Dark Astoria Paragon City

Commander John Monroe sat in his folding camp chair heavy elbows on his desk leaning forward slightly one large paw of a hand covering his brow as the other guides the fountain pen along the page with only the occasional slight scratching noise of one writing in a fluid easy manner of the correspondent than the stilted stop and start method of the biographer. The light of his lantern shone a soft golden diffused light through his narrow tent across his weather beaten face and onto his page as he wrote to his loving wife.

"My Dearest Rita,

I hope your day has gone better than mine has, it is late at night here, nearly morning in fact and the camp is quiet as what is left of my men settled down for some much needed shut eye if they are lucky enough to get it after the horror they witnessed tonight. The only thing that disrupts the blessed quiet is the occasional burst of the sentry guns on our outer perimeter and the distant bonfires of our enemies which light up the dark sky.

Although we are as far as we can get from the front lines here at base camp the low moaning of the dead become a constantly grating sound and although my little visitor seems sound asleep in her own bunk tucked neatly next to my own bed, waking up only every so often her eyes wide with terror before I shush her again and rock her back to sleep. I can not sleep however; troubles and burdens lay heavily upon my heart, I lay awake and wonder what would have happened to you and the girls if it had been our town the Banished ones had come too and not to Paragon City and to my little visitors family instead. If you would have become infected and tried to eat your children as her mother had.

I know you would tell me to be quiet and would hush my fears of what the future world and all the new terrors it holds for our daughters. I know that the bible says god gives us our burdens but only so much as we can handle, however looking at the face of the little girl I found today I wonder if that is really true, and why god would choose for an innocent little girl to go through what she has…."

There had been ten thousand souls in Astoria when the first infected where let loose on the populace by the Banished Pantheon, it wasn't ascertained yet what the groups intention where beyond securing their foothold on the area, controlling it and maintaining that stranglehold, but the death and destruction which had been wrought on the once safe neighborhood was complete and deplorable enough.

The infected feasted upon the flesh of the living, their amazing brute strength, no need for sleep, comfort, tools or sustenance and lack of self preservation made them formidable opponents. Usually a man will stop what he is doing if it causes him physical pain or he finds he is unable to physically continue his task from a strain, fatigue or pulled muscle or tendon, a break or lack of strength. Zombies, for that's what these creatures where, the breathing, walking undead, had no such stopper, all they had was their blood lust and the never ending appetite of the dead which controlled them.

He had seen zombies continue after their target even after their legs and arms had been shot away by automatic machine gun fire, he had seen them push themselves along on bloody stumps gnashing yellowed and decaying teeth at the young sergeant whom had gotten lost and surrounded by a horde. He had seen a mans flack vest tear away as easily as the beasts ripped into his belly with their clawing hands while his entrails provided a gluttonous feast for the hungry moaning masses which had been his platoons downfall.

John had seen a lot of things in his many years in the service, first his tours of active duty in the Gulf War, Chechnya, the Congo, Kosovo, Bosnia, Sarajevo, and Somalia and there he had seen the horror of mans inhumanity to his fellow man in all its selfish, deprived and depraved glory, but never had he witnessed anything as sick as this neighborhood afforded.

During his time training with the Redlions where all the action he had seen and been apart of ran largely under the radar of all news media, as he heard the Colonel once say "If it's on the news somebody ****** up somewhere." However he had been surrounded and he wondered if it hadn't been for the civilian Helicopter which had rescued him and his little charge and the strange powers of the little girl whom he carried in his arms as he ran toward it if he would not be one of the undead or a feast for them instead of writing to his beloved wife Rita on this cold and lonely place.

It had been a good day after all for the Lions had been in this neighborhood of nightmares for two months now, one of the first on scene when the outbreak struck and after killing hundreds if not thousands of the infected they had finally found a survivor. The simple fact of a solitary survivor, a little girl on top of that, having been able to stay alive in such a inhospitable environment, without food or water, shelter or an adult to defend her was astonishing to behold.

They had hoped a concentrated strike to the enemies forces located primarily in Moth Cemetery would buy the builders enough time to finish off the walls which would surround and shut off the area for good and they had been making their way down the major promenade toward the side entrance of the cemetery, when they had spotted her. It had been reported that a large number of civilians had been herded by unknown individuals toward the cemetery, and it had been weeks since they had found a living thing in the now wasted and abandoned neighborhood. They where losing ground to the growing numbers of the undead every day and the small Hero contingent and even smaller Military force had managed just barely to keep their heads above the water over these past eight weeks of skirmishes and firefights with what remained of the populace now transformed into the hungry and howling dead.

His patrol had found her wandering around the cemetery wearing only a blood splattered and torn leotard and one ballerina shoe. She had been walking toward the cemetery at first but then Johnson, the trigger happy sonofabitch that he had been, had shot at her and luckily for Johnson and the little girl alike the shot had gone wide and imbedded into the brick wall just behind her. John called his man off and told Johnson to stand down despite the cowards lame remarks that the shot should have hit.

John had never seen such a sad and strange little girl in his whole life. She couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old, with white blond hair still braided in a single ponytail down her narrow back, with silvery white eyes almost glowing in the near darkness when they had found her. She had been nearly killed, mistaken for one of the undead, so ghostly pale and wide eyed did she look. She even dragged a little dolly behind her whom turned out to be the remains of her little brother while walking in a shambling sort of gait which always reminded John of his Daughter Elizabeth who would sometimes sleep walk.

However dark shadows seemed to move around the little girl, clothing her in shifting darkness and swirling moonlight, almost hiding her completely from even John's clear night vision sight. It occurred to John later that perhaps she had wanted them to see her, to rescue her from that darkness which surrounded her but had until that time had been her only true means of survival. The shadows hid her from the view and the smell of the undead.

It was a heightened sense of smell, more so than sight or sound which the hungry dead shared in common with all of the best predators in the world. Like sharks and other such highly dangerous creatures the Zombie hunted by smell primarily and the scent of freshly spilled blood was an especially strong attractant to them. If Johnson had gotten a hit on this little girl not only would he have been a monster for doing so but the attraction of her freshly spilled blood would have brought the multitude of the horde for at least two hundred yards away to their vicinity in a matter of moments. This was why his squadron and a few others a few hours before had taken the time to set up feeding poles on the south eastern side of the cemetery, drawing the horde away from the North westerly side entrance which the black ops teams lead by him had chosen to use as their point of entry. The scent of the fresh blood, even the cow and pigs bloody corpses which hung from atop the barbed wire wrapped telephone sized poles would not only act as a wonderful distraction but also when the zombies would try and climb or get pressed to close to the poles themselves their own spilt blood would trigger the inevitable feeding frenzy to begin.

It had been Johns' first wish to let the young Sergeant Hennessey to stay behind with the little girl and to bring her back to headquarters, but you know what they say about the best laid plans of men and so it was with what happened to his troops that day. The information recon which they had received had not been complete. It was not their fault however, who could have known or foreseen what the murky waters of time could show? Who could have predicted that not only had Astoria been over run by the shambling dead but also by a set of Magi and a creature so large, so powerful and so heinous as what they found that night, only minutes away from midnight, the witching hour?

When John had handed the girl off to Sergeant Hennessey the young girl began to squirm and whine and moan finally breaking free from the Sergeant and running full on into the dark cemetery. Breaking formation and going after his charge Hennessey made pursuit and John and his men following shortly there after. Once they had crossed the threshold behind the little girl they had seen four strange lights pass by the spot where they had all been assembled but moments before.

A floating mask like creature surrounded by living breathing men and women and at least twenty undead the Mages or so he assumed them to be had glowing tattooed symbols shinning from bare and savage chests wandered to their exact position of mere moments before, where they would have been still if Hennessey hadn't been foolish enough to break rank and disobey a direct order by following the girl. Now as they sat in the shadowed darkness cast by the high wall of the cemetery they witnessed the true architects of the plague which had swept through Astoria.

The Banished Pantheon.

The patrol or so John concluded them to be continued along their way passing the outer wall just behind them, the little girl with a little finger pressed to her lips shushed them as the Pantheon mages moved out of ear shot and sight. The girl was sensible to her surroundings, she had been living in this nightmare for two months, not senseless, not hiding, not even with the blessing of being called luckily unaware, and she had learned to adapt and to survive! She knew who and what the creatures where that ran this carnival of soulless husks, she knew their strengths and weakness and in short she knew more than the recon team had known after scouring the place for hours.

John figured it was an act of providence that he should have met her on that long stretch of road bordering Moth cemetery or else he and his men would have entered the place blind and as helpless as new born kittens. The little girl whispered some words he could not hear and tracing a symbol in the air using one tiny little finger a cold wind rustled around them and a softer darkness flowed around them like a protective bubble made up of the shifting swirling shadows which he had seen surrounding her just moments before.

They moved in a low crouch matching the short legged speed and movements of their miniature guide as she used the dark shadows cast by the wall and the taller tombstones and statuary as cover so did they. The bright full moon shone its brilliant silvery light down upon the rolling hillside of the cemetery's green and verdant landscape showing for those who had eyes to see large mounds of broken earth and tunnels which ran deep into the earth itself.

Soon the sight of distant bonfires came near, what they had once thought to be broken gas manes set ablaze now turned out to be several camps of pantheon worshipers, the floating masks of various colors, the symbols in the magi's chests glowing brightly in the gloom. While milling about spreading on for what seemed like ages behind them spread the sea of the fallen, the moaning swaying tides of the undead. Their attention seemed captivated to a centralized grouping of alters around which the floating masks and their congregation meet, in the hands of two magus each where some struggling some senseless men women and children obvious sacrifices for some unknown deity.

Johns mind reeled at the idea of witnessing the deaths of these people for the pantheons most heinous of deeds, human sacrifice. He knew his men must be feeling the same and while he looked on a little girl who had been clutching for dear life to a Barbie doll was now being lifted and strapped down next to a screaming and hysterical woman and a teenage boy who kept keening in a high and senseless manner. John knew they couldn't stand by and simply watch what would become of these people, his orders had been clear, to try and free as many hostages as he could while the other teams planted the explosive charges.

John called back the attention of his men and gave the orders on his radio for the rest of the teams to deploy; they would go in guns blazing but only after the charges had taken down the majority of the mages front line. Johns' men scattered and began arming the area with explosives and trip mines, covering their exit as they would hopefully retreat with the slower moving civilians. The General had made plans for a civilian helicopter to act as a drop ship to take away the survivors at the rendezvous point by as many trips as where necessary, but for right now they where on their own.

As he was getting ready to give the order to begin the assault a tiny hand tugged on his cargo pants left pocket. He looked down into the wide silvery eyes of the strange child which had lead them here and he squatted down before her making them face to face and eye level. She whispered something he would never forget in his ear and with that same small cold little finger she traced upon the middle of his forehead the symbol of an open eye.

His vision became more keen, his accuracy improved and as they entered the assault while grenades where launched, and explosions bloomed like bright flowers all around him every target he aimed for he hit true. Head shot after headshot a bullet wasted no where as he dealt permanent death to each and every zombie or ghoul. His men converged around the alters cutting the men and women free, while their team members dropped one after another swarmed by the sea of zombies. Pearsons, Holt, Johnson, nay half his platoon in that first wave fell only slowed down the progress of some, before reinforcement of the enemy could arrive.

The glowing red, blue, green and purple of the masks and their faithful and another creature besides, a totem floating up from the edge of the crowd grabbing his men and ripping off their legs and arms like flies. Hurling poisonous tipped spears impaling survivors as they ran by him. The little girl shouting in a strange language her voice loud and high and clear, little hands out thrust before her a dark bubble deflecting the spears. It was then that he noticed as the shadows around her grew bright, that each had swirling peaceful faces as if lit from some inner light.

She stood before the wall of the dead whom pressed upon her fortress made up of souls, tears streaming down her cheeks as she see's the little girl with the Barbie doll ripped open from head to toe. John walking up to her slowly as he gave his men the order to retreat put his hand carefully upon the brave little girls shoulder her little shoulders shaking with her great effort his heart breaking for her as she bends down to retrieve the orphaned dolly.

The barrier she had made couldn't have held for very much longer, for scooping the child up from off her feet John ran with her hitting the button on the activation sequence the count down began and as they made it down the steep hillside of Moth cemetery they where rocked side to side as they ran. Explosions culled their numbers as the dead gave hot pursuit, however only four of his men made it out alive and only three survivors and his little miracle too boot.

That was what John called her from that night until his death; Sophie was his miracle that night when on so many occasions he and his men could have all been dead. The Helicopter met them at the way point and took them away; back at base camp he'd had a lot to explain. The little girl wouldn't leave his side and cried whenever anyone tried to take her away. He had been allowed to watch over her once the General gave his command.

She had been honored as another soldier taken back to Israel to the Redlion training camp, where she honed her martial skills and honed her magic into a serious weapon to be only under the guidance of a commanding officer, that was until John left the Lions and formed his own company of men.

Sophie grew up with him, John Monroe the leader of the Black Widow Squadron, Mercenaries where they all, but that's a story for next time boys and girls, but for now my tale is told.

Sophie's mother had been born and raised on the Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak during the 80's, a place where Sophie would turn to during times of great need, both for herself and the Kibbutz. She would visit her family there during harvest times when under John's care and she had never been able to understand why her mother, when she had reached the age of 17 Jillian (Born Ruth Baratz) had run away from the place she had called her home, her parents, her Ishii Ben and throwing caution and her conservative Zionist morals to the wind became a dancer in Jerusalem. What happened to Jillian there after dear reader you pretty much know, however this story is not Jillians to be told but rather what happened in that short span of time that Sophie spent abroad before returning to take up residence in the Rhode Island City which had once been her home.

Deep in Negev Desert there deep set into the mountain side a rolling valley stretching out below was the entrance of a hidden base where resided the privatized Military Company known only as "The Red Lions". The Red Lions had been founded by one Grigori Rykov, a former Spetsnaz GRU officer in 1964 where the small company of men (and strange rumors said one ghostly white haired woman) in 1967 made their claim to fame in the Six Day War fighting alongside the nation of Israel against the nations of Egypt, Syria and Jordan as a commando unit sabotaging Egyptian strong points and missile outposts and at the end of only Six days Israel stood triumphant against them all.

Sophie grew up under the care of John Monroe, as her Commanding officer, adoptive father figure and friend. She had been born in the land of Israel, and to its arms she returned brought home to the land of her ancestors by John to be raised by him after the horror of the events of Dark Astoria impressed themselves permanently upon her 8 year old mind. She grew tall, strong and beautiful under the hot desert sun. She was quick and lean and in manner a cold solitary ruthlessness to survive which one glance to her wintry blue eyes could make any of the junior officers shiver when they looked at her.

Rita Monroe had met the little girl shortly after John had rescued her, it had been Rita's wish that they could adopt the little girl from Paragon City to be raised alongside the twin Monroe girls who where just about the same age as Sophie, but soon it was realized that the strange powers exhibited by the little girl needed to be controlled, and explored in a safe environment with teachers of her own kind. First they had tried contacting Magi, however the young Warlock whom they had sent to assess Sophie's powers had a nervous break down and had reported that the little girl plagued him with nightmares.

In the few years she had lived with John and Rita and their two lovely older daughters in the D.C area it had become a trial for Rita to keep Sophie in line while John was away on assignment. The local schools would not take her after her "episodes" of lying, stealing, breaking things and generally scaring the other children. However Sophie had tried on numerous occasions to tell her teachers that she had not broken that girls doll, or lied to that teacher about her husband cheating on her, or taken that boys glove but that it had been the "others" which surrounded and plagued her night and day. The few times when she had tried to explain most teachers had dismissed her as "making up stories" or when Sophie would say something a little to close to the truth she was again shifted from teacher to teacher, and school to school until Rita could take no more.

In the end John had applied to Rykov for permission to introduce the little girl to a compatriot who was on retainer with the Lions, a young but vastly powerful mage by the name of Damien Wrent. Damien was sixteen from Havana Cuba, but he had lived all over the Caribbean, Africa and South America. He was born however in Sierra Leon and grew up there learning to fight and survive in that hostile land as a child soldier. What was more Damien Wrent was a Babalorisha a priest or "godchild" in Santeria and a very powerful illusionist besides. When the young man had met Sophie he had thrown the ekwele for her and he had seen their future together. She was then only ten years old.

Rykov himself a long time and dear friend of Johns agreed with John one night after dinner over a cup of coffee and a few slices of Rita's home made cheese cake that to his assessment that the little girl would be better off, much to Rita's dismay, being raised amongst the few other child trainee's at the Red Lions base. This way not only could she receive the best education her skills required in the proximity to a qualified teacher, but also so that the skills for fighting and survival she had not given up since joining the Monroe household (like sleeping with knives under her pillow, hording canned goods, making crude weapons, collecting water via a home made apparatus on the roof, building fires and hiding where no one could find her, could be put to some practical use.

So it was decided and Sophie said good bye to a tearful Rita and the likewise teary set of Monroe girls to live entirely in the desert landscape in a den of Lions with promises of Christmas and summer holidays to visit.

She had been trained in various forms of hand to hand combat, to use all manner of guns with skill and precision, to create and disable all forms of traps, mines and warheads, to assess threats and to find the most strategic points in order to take them down. Sophie became most proficient in the use of edged weapons and while a dear friend of hers was the most dangerous shot with his sniper rifle it was said Sophie was just as good with her blades.

Her training with Damien had been sporadic through out her years residing with the Red lions, he was always on undercover missions, he worked with other organizations and Governments other than the Red lions, mainly those who could afford his astronomical fee's no matter what they wanted done as long as he got his fee was all Damien cared about. In short Damien Wrent was a Mercenary.

Sophie however saw none of Damiens flaws, indeed he kept all of his dealings to himself alone, he was known under many different aliases and those who talked often found there way to the bottom of a vat of Lyme somewhere out in the desert. Damien could afford to be choosy about the jobs he took however and he did so, someone with his specialized skill set and nominal moral compass was in short supply and Damien made a good show of it always around Sophie. He would tell her of the horrible foreign dignitary who he had just killed whom had been ordering his army to murder children and **** the women of whole villages before burning farms and leaving the survivors to starve. Most of the time he was right, but then that is the nature of the world and especially the one Sophie had lived in.

Sophie had grown up quite enamored with Damien Wrent, he had been dangerous, skilled and mysterious as well as devilishly charming. In a base full of soldiers some her own age or not many years older Sophie had never had many romantic feelings for any save one, so when Damien had returned to Base camp and announced Sophies education in the mystical arts would begin in earnest. (for until that time her powers had simply been dampened by an amulet given to her by Damien when they had first met, which as Sophie would later come to find out had been transferring some of her natural and uncontrollable power to Damiens use instead of her own.)With the boy whom she had been fond there had only ever been a single kiss before he too was gone, off to fight in the Rikti invasion of Tel Aviv, and leaving her to her fate she began her real training.

It was during this time that John and Sophie had received word that Rita and the two girls had been in a car accident. The girls had survived though both remained in comas but Rita had not made it and died in transport to the hospital. John and Sophie traveled back to D.C to sit by the bedside of the two girls who had been like sisters to her and when their spirits left their bodies it was not Sophie who wept She saw them shining and pure forms linger near her only a moment before with tender smiles and waving hands they walked off into oblivion together hand in hand as they had entered this world Rebecca and Anne.

Sophie had tried to comfort John as best as she could, but a silent gravity overcame him after the last coffin was put into the ground. He had not wanted to hear about the shining light or the open door way. He had not wanted her to talk about either Rita or the girls again, he became silent and remote. He no longer dined with her or Commander Rykov, he put himself again on active duty instead of training and tactical operations as he had been for the past seven years. He argued all the time with the commander behind closed doors and the only person he seemed to talk to was Damien.

Indeed Damien at that point and time had become inseparable to both John and Sophie herself, she awoke every morning with his name on her lips eager to tell him of some new dream or plan for their study, they would run together every morning and talk long into the night. He became her everything and when John had walked away from the Lions forever it was Damien who told her it was the only way.

John had taken a group of his finest men, those men and women whom where especially talented, who excelled in certain techniques and training to work for him instead of the lions as Mercenaries. It was Damien who gave John contacts and names, who set up meetings and helped to negotiate terms. It was Damien whom organized and orchestrated it all.

However as the saying goes, love is blind, and no lover was more so than Sophie. She thought the sun and moon rose and set over Damien Wrent, and to his own astonishment at least, though he had seen it fore told so many years ago in the ekwele, he adored and coveted her with such a zealous almost crazed passion that only a Sociopath could call love. In fact he had already killed two men who had asked for her hand to dance one night at a dance hall in Bogota, and a string of others in all the cities and town they had visited since. Sophie had never known however, indeed when one night deep in the heart of the Colombian jungles after the two had come together in the pebble lined pool of the local mineral hot spring Damien had proposed, and she had made him the happiest of men.

It was Damien to whom had convinced her that when John, whom had been acting strangely for many months, talking about retirement and not going with the team on assignments, had gone missing, that it was the right thing to do to use her power to torture the man whom had last seen John. To torture him in body and soul, for long screaming hours, deep in the wastes of Russia's Siberian desert, where it was only Sophie's heart which had turned from Ice to stone.

In many years that followed the two had wrought bloody macabre tyranny across the globe, killing indiscriminately on one side, and trying to find some clue of what had happened to the man whom had become her father on the other. Slowly Sophie's path had lead her back to Paragon City where she was not known as the "Harvester of Souls" where she hoped to find some clue of what had become of herself as well as John Monroe.

book of revelations♫: When the man comes around By; Johnny Cash (See book of Revelations) There's a man going around taking names And he decides who to free and who to blame Everybody won't be treated all the same There'll be a golden ladder reaching down When the Man comes around The hairs on your arm will stand up At the terror in each sip and in each sup Will you partake of that last offered cup? Or disappear into the potter's ground When the Man comes around Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers One hundred million angels singing Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum Voices calling, voices crying Some are born and some are dying It's Alpha and Omega's kingdom come And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree The virgins are all trimming their wicks The whirlwind is in the thorn tree It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks Till Armageddon no shalam, no shalom Then the father hen will call his chickens home The wise man will bow down before the throne And at His feet they'll cast their golden crowns When the Man comes around Whoever is unjust let him be unjust still Whoever is righteous let him be righteous still Whoever is filthy let him be filthy still Listen to the words long written down When the Man comes around Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers One hundred million angels singing Multitudes are marching to the big kettledrum Voices calling and voices crying Some are born and some are dying It's Alpha and Omega's kingdom come And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree The virgins are all trimming their wicks The whirlwind is in the thorn tree It's hard for thee to kick against the pricks In measured hundred weight and penney pound When the Man comes around. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts And I looked and behold, a pale horse And his name that sat on him was Death And Hell followed with him.