A DM Stash & Nerikson Collaboration
[Presupported in 32mm and 75mm scale]
[LYS Files Included]
A spectre of the Queensland outback, and a watcher of the borderlands that encircle the Chrome Coast. Elsie grew up above the neon skyline of the Coast, living a life of luxury in a penthouse of the prestigious eQ1. Luxury paid for by her father, Darren Echoes, a politico who reigned from his ivory tower, weaving his way into every exclusive club and despotic shithole the city had to offer. Both sides bowed to his whim, the mighty and the meek. Corpos showered him with opulent gifts, housed him in their most exclusive apartments and granted any other wishes he desired. Street rats and gronks acted as his muscle for hire, doing whatever dirty work he needed, acting through a line of seven or more proxies, ensuring whatever the job was, it never got traced back to him.
Though fleeting is the dream of boundless wealth in the Chrome Coast, especially for men like Darren Echoes. Whether his own folly or on the coin of a scorned opponent, a brutal end closed out his chapter in local politics. Elsie was home that night, her eyes glued to reelers on the TV, her mother in the kitchen, her father in his study. Rumbling wasn’t unusual for them in the eQ1, helicopter and P-VTOL tours regularly skimmed past their penthouse. Yet this was near midnight, a night clear enough to see a handful of stars, when a blinding light pierced through the curtains, and after, a deathly rattle. A thousand bullets ripped through the tempered glass, the deafening roar of the minigun throwing Elsie to the floor as the young girl’s home was shredded like tissue paper all around her. The TV punched to dust by the hail of gunfire, the kitchen cabinets her mother cowered behind torn to splinters, painted in red mist by what was left of her body, strewn across the room. It was barely fifteen seconds before the craft sailed off back into darkness, blacking out its lights as it left.
Grief immediately gripped her: she knew her mother was dead, she was old enough to understand there was no surviving what she had endured, there would be no need to shake what was left of her in a vain bid to wake her up. Tears flowed freely from her eyes, she ran to her father’s study, hoping that he might have fared as well as her, though hope is a fool’s gambit on the Coast. Crimson covered the walls, and there was barely enough left of him to even know if what was in there was truly his body. In truth, Elsie and her mother had simply been the victims of collateral, the prefire of a spooling minigun unleashing a second too early, before two thousand rounds tore her father and his study to ribbons.
As she left the study, a sharp pain suddenly shot from her left forearm, looking down, she saw it was dangling by a thread, a hole punched through it the size of her fist. Her legs gave way beneath her, and she fell into the swallowing darkness. Two weeks later she awoke, a Chrome arm in place of where her last had been. Her hospital room was adorned in a forest of flowers, piled in a mountain by her bedside, a stack of cards filled with condolences and best wishes neatly kept to the side of them. The doctors and therapists were quick to tell her what happened, both to her parents, and her own injuries, yet the city flooded in support of her, at least for a time.
Virtuous signals only are as good as those who care to watch them, however, and Elsie and the tragedy that befell her was forgotten after barely a few months. Donations froze, and her uncle and aunt who housed her became indicted for alleged corruption barely a year after her father’s death, leaving young Elsie homeless. With little else to turn to, she began sifting through the hundreds of cards that had been left at her hospital, calling relatives, friends and close contacts of her parents, all in a bid for help. None answered. A week later, as debt collectors came to force her from her Uncle’s house, a man in a black suit with piercing blue eyes halted them. He introduced himself as Mr. Azure, her father’s contact in ePower Enterprises. To Elsie he offered a single glint of hope: he would purchase her uncle’s house for her to live in, provide her a scholared tutorship at ePower Academy, a live-in housekeeper, food and a guaranteed future job at ePower Enterprises, all in exchange for her untenable loyalty to the corporation. She agreed, with little other choice before her.
Elsie knew an ulterior motive lay beneath his deceptive grin, yet could not deduce what intent he might have: street urchins like her were as common as syphilis in a crackhouse, she didn’t know anything about her father’s dealings and held no special skills or merit of her own. Still, she found a strange sense of belonging in ePower Academy, later moving into its graduate Law Enforcement program, becoming a Captain in ePower’s SpecFor paramilitary arm. Though the longer she stayed, the more uneasy she felt: something was amiss, memories flashed like remnant glitches of deleted scenes in a NeuroDive. Suspecting this, she turned on her bodycam during one of her cybernetic maintenance routines in which she was rendered unconscious while they allegedly updated her firmware. The truth of the video revealed that instead, they had been scouring her brain for a decade, flicking through her memories like they were late night TV channels, trying to find something to watch. A key to a blackbook project from her father’s past, yet they were no closer now than they were a decade ago. Mr. Azure himself made a surprise appearance, announcing that if no progress was made in the next year, they would terminate the project.
Learning this, that same night she left the Chrome Coast under the cover of darkness, fleeing to the city of Toowoomba and seeking Asylum status. Seeing her desperate situation, and her set of skills and experience, she was given a conditional approval: become a citizen of East Australia, in return for serving her in their armed forces. The Bush Rangers were in constant need of reinforcement: a high demand and high-risk job that saw more combat than any other division of EA’s military. Tasked with intercepting and terminating convoys suspected of smuggling weapons, narcotics, people and dodgy chrome, though the corpos and gangs that ran these convoys usually paid for equally tough muscle to protect them. She found solace in the untamed outback, a far cry from the glitz and glitter of the Coast, where freedome would follow her whichever way she stepped, and the shadows of her servitude under ePower were far behind her.
Her squad’s current assignment, however, is far removed from their usual rap sheet: a bounty, wanted dead or alive. A whole crew leaving the Chrome Coast and heading for their deadrop reward. She’s making sure they drop dead first.
