Juno [COMPLETED]

Real Name: Sheila Clarice Embrance
Villain Name: Juno
Title: The White Queen
Alignment: Evil Lawful
Age: 24
Gender: Female
Race: Caucasian
Hair: Snow-white
Eyes: Emerald-green
Height: 5 feet 7 inches
Weight: 58 kg
Blood type: AB+




Juno likes to have the ‘ancient goddess’ look when she is ‘in costume’. As Sheila Embrance, she prefers to dress in the trendiest (and most expensive) fashion statements, or items of her own making.


Juno has almost all the trappings of a psychopath, to a first-time observer. She is very arrogant and self-assured, manipulative dialed to an 11, and very impulsive and sensation-seeking, as well as being outspoken and fearless (no human is completely without fear, but Juno really tries). But there are some notable differences between her and your garden-variety psychopath, which only serve to make her even worse than those with the abovementioned personality disorder. While the average psychopath does not take responsibility for their actions, Juno will never try to pass blame or excuse herself (unless she determines that doing so may be more beneficial in the long run). If you thought this was a good thing, think again. Her refusal to excuse herself is only because she is of the opinion that she is never wrong, and as such neither needs to explain herself, excuse herself, or apologize to anyone. The other notable difference between herself and a psychopath is that psychopaths are not empathic. Juno is. She understands emotions and can feel them more acutely than others, due to her powers. The only problem is that she does not care a whit. On any given day, Juno can probably tell you with very high accuracy what someone else is feeling. But to her, emotions are a tool to manipulate others, and so she’s really quite interested in how others feel… for all the wrong reasons. While Juno loves to lead and have others scurry around to do her bidding, her thrill-seeking behavior makes her go out to proverbially get her own hands dirty from time to time. This is because a curious effect that Juno’s powers have on her is that she craves any intense sensational rush, be it joy, excitement, and even alarm and pain (this makes her quite both sadistic and masochistic in battle). Feelings that seem to ‘weigh’ heavily on the mind, like guilt, worry and despair will really unhinge Juno, and make her more compulsive in her desire to ‘feel thrills’. Her desire for such excitement has led her to engage in all manners of activities from rock climbing to hunting dangerous creatures to illegal underground cage fights. She always triumphs, as (she opines) must be expected.

As someone who was spoilt rotten, Juno is a rather imperious young woman, and does not do well with rejection, being argued with, or lip and sass, in general. Experiencing constant defeats and setbacks is very jarring to her, although she can be very patient, as long as she perceives that things are running according to plan. And plan she can. Despite her young age and lack of general experience, Juno is a very shrewd tactician, and is quite a critical thinker, very good at coming up with effective strategies on the fly, as well as tactics with far-reaching effects and subtle designs. Even without her psychic powers, her ability to manipulate others is incredible. She is a shameless opportunist, taking advantage of any and everything, just to get a lead in whatever situation she finds herself in. While she is an incredibly wanton flirt, Juno’s body count, in terms of sexual encounters, is unbelievably low, only because she cannot see herself sleeping with someone below her station (she is yet to come across anyone that has attained her lofty station to whom she is not related). She is not above making out, however, and can be very forward in her advances, only because she knows that the lack of fulfilment of sexual tension makes her targets easier to manipulate, and she does enjoy having people at her mercy. Whether in combat or normal interactions, Juno loves messing with people and teasing them. A curious addendum is that she is not above complete shame though, and her limit on how much she can expose herself is the bikini (with shockingly small dimensions). A very important thing to note about Juno is her vindictiveness. She is as merciless as ambition, the sea, the grave and calculus, all thrown together into a blender and force-loaded via enema to Justice on a Monday morning. If she is wronged, she will take vengeance, no matter how long she must wait to do it. And if she feels her vengeance isn’t enough (which she usually does), she will take it again. Juno has a twisted sense of honor though, in the sense that she will hardly ever hurt those who have not wronged her, even if they are related to the object of her wrath. She will only hurt such ones if she sees no other way of getting her revenge.

Both due to her psychic powers and her astounding talent at acting, almost no one knows that the imperious Juno, and the frivolous Sheila Embrance are one and the same person. When she acts as her alter ego, Sheila, she is quite sunny and merry to the point of giddiness. She is also quite talkative and appears a lot more sheltered and naïve than she actually is. Despite this, Sheila remains an incorrigible flirt, although in this regard, she can be quite mercurial, going from acting coy one moment to being rather provocative the next. She is very hedonistic and eager to enjoy herself, and seems unwilling to undergo even the slightest discomfort. Sheila also seems to be apparently of the opinion that throwing money at anything will solve it, and does not seem to have issues with trivial and largescale spending. But what many people do not know is that the spoilt and playful Sheila Embrance known to the public is actually a false personality well played; the real personality of Sheila Embrance is Juno’s.

Of course, she appears to be quite a horrid person, but even the worst ones have some good sides. Juno is no exception. She is very charismatic and can be very charming, especially as the flighty and vain Sheila Embrance. She loves to have a good time, and make sure that those with her are getting such as well, unless her idea of having a good time is ruining theirs. She is also very loyal to those she feels she can trust; even though ‘normal humans’ are below her, a good empress makes her subjects happy. Thus, Juno will strive to make sure that her followers are happy, making sure they get what they want, as long as this doesn’t clash with her plans. She is also known for lavishly rewarding those who please her. Juno does not like to owe in any way, whether it be a good deed or bad deed done to her. She does not believe in free favors, and will seek to repay those who do favors for her, in however she feels she can. Also, while Juno is very manipulative, she hardly lies, when giving her word. If she says she will do something, she will, unless the plan had been to deceive you all along. If she had no intention of breaking her word initially, she will keep her word at great cost to herself. Juno is also very determined and efficient, and can be expected to pull her own weight, if she finds herself in a team, though she will always try to be the one calling the shots. Finally, Juno is quite imaginative and has a rather creative mind, which she has put to good use in the running of her fashion business.

It must be finally said that Juno loves her father, Lord Horace Embrance, with a passion, and will almost always listen to what he says. Gaining his favor or displeasure is a surefire way of earning Juno’s affection or wrath, respectively. She is also fond of her butler, Maxwell Grentlocke, and he is the only person (aside from her father, who never does) that she will permit to argue with her or throw veiled insults her way. Nobody else can dare without retribution.


We could always just start with the birth of the royal pain known as Sheila Embrance, but that would leave a lot unsaid about her background, which is just as important to this matter as the birth of this bundle of joy and disaster. The Embrances go ways back, with the first Embrance in records being a Norman high-ranked soldier when the Plantagenets began ruling England in the 1100s. While the Embrances did not show much otherwise in history, the family suddenly became more powerful towards the end of the 16th century. This was due to an extraterrestrial space ship which crashed on Embrance land holdings in Lancashire. The young heir of the household, Victor, discovered the vessel by chance, seeing as the ship had flown in under a cloaking device too superior to be detected by the technology of the time. Victor discovered a strange creature wandering the grounds, and on accosting it, was shocked to discover that it quickly changed form to become more similar to his. The strange creature could not understand him, but it was quick to learn his cues, and he took it home. His father, while initially unbelieving of his son’s story, was convinced that this creature was no mere human, as it had learned the English being spoken before the day was over. The creature revealed that it was the servant of an alien fugitive, and took them to the ship which had brought its master to Earth. The alien master had however expired, and the ship had been too damaged to be of any use. The strange creature was offered a place in the household, to which it agreed, not having any other thing to do. Victor’s father, being a very prudent and secretive man, made no news of this discovery, but instead studied all he could about this alien visitor, learning that its master had been fleeing from its home, and its ship had been damaged by its pursuers, before managing to escape. The owner of the ship had been grievously injured in the battle, and had died shortly before the ship landed on Earth. Although the alien ship was badly damaged, a number of materials were able to be recovered from it, from which, by the tutelage of the strange creature which had now come to be called Maxwell Grentlocke, the secret of making the substance known as yliaster was learned. The only way to manipulate the yliaster was to use the energy from certain gemstones which had served as the power source of the ship. As the Embrances worked with these alien power sources, they soon discovered that after a long while, they could work the yliaster without requiring exposure to the stones. They also discovered that they could project the energy of their minds to affect the external world, like no other could do, and their children always developed the ability at puberty. The Embrances had become psychics.

Fast forward hundreds of years to the 21st century. The Embrances had maintained their relatively secretive ways, but their ability to manufacture and sell yliaster in form of other commodities had made them very affluent. It must also be known that the Embrances have long been rumored to have their hands in the shady parts of business as well, because enterprises were easier to control when organized crime was involved. Sadly, the secrecy of the Embrances had resulted in the family shrinking, until at that time, the only known Embrance was Horace Embrance. He got married to a young woman with no traceable family named June (it appears that in order to keep the Embrance family matter a secret, the Embrances only ever married people with no surviving families, or did not marry at all, which contributed greatly to their present dwindling number). Despite this weird Embrance quirk, for all intents and purposes, Horace did love June very much, and the two of them were very happy. Then June got pregnant. What had been a thing of joy became bittersweet, as the young woman passed away at the birth of her daughter, despite the access the Embrances had to the best medical service. Horace never married again.

The girl born to Horace and June was named Sheila (June had loved that name), and grew up with all the privileges money could afford. And so it is in many cases that when privilege meets apathy, misfortune is born. It is not enough to love a child; care must be taken to raise the child right. While Horace did not skimp on displaying his love for his daughter, he usually allowed her to have her way, resulting in her becoming a self-centered, vain young woman. To make matters worse, the only place he was firm with her was in matters of education, and her specialized education raised her to see the world as a resource to be claimed by the strongest, as all the Darwinist fools would love to yap. And like every other Embrance who came after Victor, she was born with the natural ability to use psionics, and was trained by her father to use it well. She graduated from the Imperial College of London at age 21, with a first class degree in Finance. Beautiful, intelligent, rich and powerful, some people just had it all.

That was when Sheila discovered that her father had fallen ill. The disease was unknown to all the medical experts that examined him. All they could do was try to improve his quality of life and hope he lived long enough for a cure to be created and administered. And that was when Sheila decided to go to North America. For starters, she knew her father had always desired to stretch his businesses across the Atlantic. Secondly, there did seem to be a lot going on in North America; maybe she could find a cure for her father there. Finally, the US presently seemed much more interesting than the UK did, with all the huge meta activity going on there. The only interesting thing that had really happened in the UK, in Sheila’s opinion, was the fight between Jeisen and Entei which Sheila had been delighted to be relatively close to (being a student in London at the time). Eager to ensure the safety of his daughter, and to keep up the Embrance tradition of secrecy, Horace had tried to dissuade her, to no avail. Resigning himself to his daughter’s wishes, he arranged for Maxwell, the loyal servant of the Embrances, to travel with his daughter to North America, under the guise of a very rich newly married couple, looking to grow their roots on American soil, as they ran Grentlocke Incorporated.

Wanting to have the time of her life, but feeling inclined to respect her father’s wishes by keeping the Embrance secrets, Sheila came up with the perfect solution: she would have an alter ego. This was quite easy to create, thanks to her powers, and she decided to name this other side of her Juno, partly in honor of the mother she never knew, and due to her belief that she was something of a goddess among mortals. Now, having set up her clothing business in New York, which she named Sheila’s Stitches, she spends her time between designing clothes for the business, exploding on New York’s socialite sphere with aplomb, and ruthlessly carving out her own shares in the darker, seedier underbelly of New York’s less legal side, in order to ensure that the Embrance name digs its roots properly in New York, hopefully even controlling the entire city in time, before spreading to the entire country. She is also avidly seeking cures, or people with knowledge of such, in order to see her father return to good health. No one had better stand in her way, or there’ll be hell to pay.


Telepathy: Juno’s greatest power is the ability to reach out and touch the minds of others. At present, the furthest range of her telepathy (unless otherwise stated) is 500 meters. Juno’s telepathy grants her the following abilities:
*Hypnosis: Juno can affect the thought processes of others, influencing them to do her bidding, or altering their memories or opinions on a matter. Her ability to affect people’s minds is dependent on her distance from them; the closer she is, the stronger her mental hold on them. Strong-willed people can resist this power, though Juno can attempt to slip suggestions into their mind and hope they will mistake these suggestions for their own thoughts and act on them. Requires the focusing crystal to extend beyond tactile range. [Requires Permission]
*Subliminal Illusion: This is how Juno has been able to keep her life as Sheila Embrance separate from her more criminal side. Anyone who receives information about her will simply refuse to consider that Juno and Sheila Embrance are the same person. This power is rather insidious, though it isn’t particularly dangerous. It has no other function than to keep her identity a secret without having to use a mask or other disguise. There is no range limit to this power.
*Mental Communication: Juno can make conversation directly with the minds of others, without needing to use the normal communication channels. She can also project her thoughts and mental images into peoples’ minds. Range is 500 meters. People with strong wills can refuse to be communicated with.
*Mind Reading: Juno can telepathically read minds within a 200 meter range. Strong-willed people can easily resist her mental prying through force of will. If Juno attempts to force information out of a target, it becomes a battle of wills (mostly a plot device and is based on what the characters’ authorities allow). However, successfully forcing information out of a target is a rather painful experience for the target (this is also merely for plot). This power also causes Juno’s own mind to be shielded from psychic attacks. Requires the focusing crystal to extend beyond tactile range. [Requires Permission]
*Empathy: Juno is a powerful empath, and can clearly sense the emotions of people around her, as well as manipulate emotions and neural sensations, creating, increasing and reducing them in the minds of others in a range of 500 meters. The strong-willed can still function despite her emotional manipulation, but emotions are a tricky thing [Requires Permission]. Juno can only manipulate neural sensations when touching a target.
*Emotion Absorption: Juno can absorb the emotions of those whom she touches, which results in her gaining more psychic energy to utilize. As long as she can find people to absorb emotions from, she can continue fighting. Those from whom emotions are absorbed will feel slightly more tired than normal (not enough to affect combat or activity), but won’t realize Juno did anything to them, unless they are aware of this ability. Note that this absorption does not leave its target emotionless; they will still feel whatever emotions they have at the time, but the emotions will quickly wear away and they will feel jaded. As a plot device, Juno can kill someone by absorbing too much emotion, leading to her absorbing their life energies and leaving a withered husk of a body behind.

Telekinesis: Juno can manipulate the environment via her mental powers. Juno’s telekinesis grants her the following abilities:
*Psychokinesis: Juno can move objects with her mind, telekinetically push or pull objects, or speed them up, slow them down or halt them. The maximum number of things Juno can control at a time is 10, and the maximum weight she can move is 100 tons. Distance range is 500 meters. Requires the focusing crystal to extend beyond tactile range.
*Psychic Shell: Juno has an unconsciously generated skin-tight telekinetic shield covering her entire body. This shield is flexible and makes it seem her skin is normally soft, but she can withstand bullet fire and explosion damage, as well as blunt force. Attacks of high power (like an anti-tank shell) will only slightly injure her. This does not mean she doesn’t feel pain.
*Telekinetic Barrier: Juno can project her psychic shell outward from her body, so that she can use it to shield other targets aside herself. She can only make a single shield at a time, and the maximum radius of the shield is 100 meters. Requires the focusing crystal to extend beyond tactile range.
*Psychic Regeneration: Juno has a faster-than-normal regeneration rate, due to unconsciously manipulating her body with telekinesis to heal faster. She also does not scar.
*Telekinetic Strength: Juno can augment her physical strength with her telekinetic ability, allowing her to lift up to 30 tons of weight.
*Levitation: Using her telekinesis, Juno can fly up to Mach 1 speeds.

Psi Energy Manipulation: Juno can manipulate psychic energy, which usually has magenta visual cues, in order to achieve a number of effects.
*Psi-Bolt: Juno can fire magenta-colored bolts of psychic energy at her opponents. While these bolts may vary in the intensity of their effects, the general effect of a psi-bolt striking a target is pain and numbness in the struck area. Headshots result in disorientation. Juno can focus enough energy into a psi-bolt that can kill a human, but due to the amount of control required, she must use the psi-bolt as a close-quarter weapon. Targets killed by lethal psi-bolts have their skin degenerate quite rapidly into a magenta-colored slush, leaving the skeleton behind. Very good for making garish statements. [Note that the killing psi-bolt is merely a plot device, and will simply function as a normal psi-bolt if used on a player character or important NPC, unless proper approval from the right authorities is granted.]
*Psi-bomb: Juno can release terribly destructive psychic energy from her body, like the explosion from a bomb. It is, for all intents and purposes, a bomb with no heat but magenta-colored light, and can easily destroy infrastructure within its range, which is 500 meters. Juno can control the range of her explosions.


Juno’s greatest weakness is her focusing crystal, the magenta gem sitting pretty on her forehead. She needs it to extend most of her powers beyond tactile distance, and all her telepathic powers (except Subliminal Illusion and Telepathic Conversation) require it to be projected beyond touching range. The focusing crystal can be torn off her forehead by the exertion of an average adult. Seeing as it always glows when Juno uses her powers only makes it more visible.

Juno cannot wear any hard caps or helmets, as hard and thick head coverings interfere with her psychic powers. This always leaves her head, and especially her focusing crystal, vulnerable.

If someone has somehow managed to discover that Juno and Sheila Embrance are the same person, her Subliminal Illusion won’t work on them anymore. Good luck trying to convince other people, though.

Juno’s telepathic powers are useless on robots, the undead, and any other being without a mind.

While Juno’s empathy can work on anything with a mind, she cannot absorb the emotions of non-humanoid creatures like animals.

Juno is something of an ‘emotion vampire’ in the literal sense of the word: she needs to absorb the emotions of others to stay ‘high’, which is when she can use her psychic powers. She cannot absorb a single person’s emotions more than once every 24 hours (as the person’s soul enters a turbulent state, making her unable to draw from it for at least a day), and if she uses her powers for long without absorbing any emotions, she will quickly tire out. If Juno can be prevented from absorbing emotions over a long time, she will show clinical signs of depression, and be unable to use her psychic powers.

Juno’s limit on the number of objects she can control with telekinesis is 10.

Juno’s Psychic Shell does not save her from inhalable hazards, and she can easily be poisoned or knocked out via gas, like a normal person.

When Juno is using her Telekinetic Barrier, her psychic shell is projected outward, and is thus not protecting her body, leaving her as vulnerable as a normal human.

While Juno can fly at up to Mach 1 speeds (approx. 343 m/s), she cannot control herself properly if she flies at any speeds over 100 m/s, and will most likely end up crashing into the environment.

Juno is very claustrophobic, and can quickly become irrational if holed up alone for long in an enclosure. The closest she can manage is a standard elevator space, and at least someone else has to be there to distract her, else she will become frantic.

Electric shocks make Juno unable to use her voluntary powers for up to 10 seconds after she has receives the shock, due to her brain waves being thrown into disarray by electric currents.

Although Juno is very manipulative, she can be manipulated herself by a smug and self-assured opponent who seems unfazed by anything she does. She will begin to get angrier and angrier until she throws all caution and plans to the wind, just to defeat and humiliate said opponent. Her lack of tact in such situations can be used against her.

Despite her villainy, Juno is very protective over those she cares about, and will be quite amenable to coercion and intimidation, should anyone she cares about be under an enemy’s power. As Juno’s only living family member, Lord Embrance is presently the only known person who fills that space.


Yliaster Focusing Crystal: A strange material made from an extraterrestrial recipe, it can be manipulated over a long period of time by people with psychic power to gain the characteristics and properties of any other material familiar to the psychic (though it may possess extra properties), and is also quite good for channeling psychic power. Exposing yliaster to present-day data collecting equipment and techniques will yield results merely identical to whatever substance the yliaster has been made to resemble, as it only responds to psychic power, and that over a long time. It is the source of the Embrance family’s fortunes, and makes up Juno’s focusing crystal, which sits on her forehead. As Sheila Embrance, she doesn’t wear it, though she keeps it close by, in case she will need it.

Yliaster Silk Clothes: While the yliaster that makes up Juno’s costume looks, and feels, like top-grade silk, she can manipulate it at molecular level. This does not confer any advantages in battle, but simply allows her to dress however she wants and avoid unfortunate wardrobe malfunctions.


Maxwell Grentlocke: Actually an alien-originated android that possesses a mind (which allows telepathic communication between Juno and himself), Maxwell Grentlocke has served the Embrance family for generations. Presently, he serves as Sheila Embrance’s butler and aide-de-camp, while masquerading in public as her overly permissive husband, since they live together in the same mansion. He looks like a Caucasian in his late thirties, with sandy-brown hair, grey eyes, a thick mustache and a monocle, and a phlegmatic expression. Always neatly groomed and dressed in a waistcoat, shirt and pants ensemble. He plays the part of an easygoing but highly intelligent businessman, and knows a lot of martial art combat forms. He dotes on Juno and always worries about her well-being. Presently the CEO and owner of Grentlocke Inc., a new but rapidly rising tech and financial solutions company.
Maxwell does not possess any special powers, except that as an artificial intelligence, he is functionally immortal and also highly intelligent. However, electric fields and temperatures above 70 degrees Centigrade make him temporarily shut down.


Sheila Embrance speaks with a Lancashire English accent. As Juno, however, she speaks with a ‘Received Pronunciation’ accent.

She is from an incredibly affluent home; her father, Lord Embrance, is a business magnate, owning many lands and chains of companies that deal in the supply and logistics of chemicals, raw materials and building materials. Lord Embrance however suffers from an unknown debilitating disease.

The general public assumption is that Sheila Embrance is in an open marriage with Maxwell Grentlocke, both immigrants from England, due to Grentlocke being a strong business associate of her father’s, who is trying to strengthen both their businesses by the marriage.

As Sheila Embrance, she owns a successful fashion outfit based in New York, known for its haute couture line, most of whose items she designs.

She is a very good dancer, and also has eclectic but extensive training in martial arts; she seems to enjoy using pro-wrestling moves in combat.

Juno is very scared of clowns. She tries not to show this, though. She is also terrified of being alone and in closed spaces.


”Kindly remind me for the umpteenth time why you aren’t at home, making a cup of tea for my successful return?” Sheila asked petulantly over the telepathic channel she had created to converse with Maxwell. ”Well, it is my job to keep an eye on you, Lady Sheila. You know your father would want that,” the butler replied as though making his reply from a textbook. The young woman rolled her eyes as she walked into the nightclub, with its crazy lights and loud music, although she could still hear Maxwell loud and clear over the noise. ”Presently, you’re not really keeping an eye on me. You’re just sitting in a car and asking me to update you on the ‘mission’. And you know I can take care of myself.” Maxwell grunted, a sign that he acknowledged she was right. ”Yes, but I feel more at peace this way.”

”Well, whatever. I know everything.”

”Not particularly always, ma’am.”

”Come again, Maxwell?”

”I’m not trying to antagonize you, but just a few moments ago, you asked me why I wasn’t home preparing tea. No one drinks tea in America. Americans drink coffee, not tea. They would laugh you to scorn if they knew you were drinking tea. And unless you want a vigil, no one drinks coffee at night.”

”For the record, I am not going to even attempt to get used to that crass thing that tastes like a mixture of battery acid and baby vomit,” Sheila replied heatedly. ”I want my tea.”

”I can assure you that there’ll be a hot cup waiting for you when you get home.”

”And a warm bath, please. I sense things are literally going to get messy. Juno out.”

So saying, she switched off the telepathic channel. Time to focus on the work to be done. It was simple: kill the owner of this night club, El Culebro. A rather vicious loan shark and all-round bad boy, who had his hands in a number of business ventures. On trying to expand the client base of Grentlocke Inc., Maxwell had realized that El Culebro had too much of a hold on the more influential clients, and suggested to Sheila that they needed to break his hold to have easier sailing in the business. There were a number of options available to do this, but the one that appealed most to Sheila was murdering the bastard.  It would be entertaining, it would give her Juno persona a bit of exposure, and most importantly, it saved time. Maxwell would have preferred less drastic options, but Juno had decided. She’d carefully investigated the man known as El Culebro, and had determined how to get to him. He had a thing for personally punishing those who wronged him, and he was quite the lecher. Having a beautiful woman seemingly at his mercy would be too much of a temptation for him to pass up. And the rest would be history.

Even without her powers, she knew the effect she had on people. Almost everyone in the club was already looking at her. Sheila allowed herself to feel the maddening flux of emotions in this place. It was exhilarating. Like a fox in a chicken coop. But this vixen had her sights on the biggest fowl in the coop. She licked her lips in anticipation. She had not had this much fun in a very long while….

The doors to a secret VIP room flew open, and the white-haired beauty stumbled through it before falling to the polished floor, her eyes wide with fear, looking the picture of utmost vulnerability. Already, she could sense the lust emanating from the heavily tattooed fellow sitting at the end of the fancy-looking table. El Culebro. ”Hey boss, we found Sabrina the Teenage Witch trying to break into one of the merchandise’s safes,” one of the man’s lackey’s said, pointing a gun at the sprawled figure. El Culebro rose. He was almost a foot taller than she was, a beast of a man in every sense of the word. A pity that all men died the same. ”Who are you, and who do you work for, girl?” he asked, as he closed the distance between them. ”If you cooperate, I shall be… lenient in your punishment.” But the plan was to get him riled enough to really feel justified in punishing her, and alone for that matter. And Sheila knew just how to do that. ”All you need to know,”, she said, effortlessly pretending to be scared while trying to appear brave, as she rose to her feet, squared her shoulders and lifted her chin defiantly, ”is that I work for very powerful people. Let me go unspoiled, and I’ll get them to throw some good money at you. It’s what you people always want, isn’t it?” Even Sheila didn’t expect the slap, as she found herself on the floor again. Her eyes widened in what everyone would assume to be pain and horror, as she stared at the huge brute standing over her. That little pig! How dare he touch her? She was going to repay this a hundred times over. The pain from the slap felt good though, and for a moment, Sheila contemplated making him slap her again. But people such as El Culebro often acted in unbridled rage when angry; if he tried to shoot her, in the presence of others, things could get a bit complicated. ”You think you’re in any position to run your mouth like that, puta?” the huge criminal hissed, grabbing her luscious white hair, as he began dragging her across the floor to a set of double doors. ”When I’m done with you, ‘unspoiled’ will be the least of your worries, if you’re still alive.” None of his men followed him. That was fast.

Things couldn’t be going more perfectly. Still, to play the part, Sheila screamed at the top of her lungs and kicked and scratched as she was hauled off to face things best left unsaid. She kept screaming as he thrust her through the doors, entered and locked the doors behind them, and began to undress. She kept screaming as the glowing magenta blade formed in her hand and she stabbed him upwards through the jaw before he could even realize what was going on. She kept screaming until she was satisfied that the people outside, if they could even hear her screams, would have imagined the worst possible things had happened to her. She knew El Culebro’s types. His men would come the next morning and get rid of the body. Except they would be in for the biggest shock of their lives when they got in. Nobody would know what had happened, because she would alter the memories of everyone in a 500 meter radius who had so much as seen her. The alteration was simple: no one would remember that a white-haired young woman had even been there. She pulled a magenta gem from the bracelet on her hand and placed it on her forehead, reaching out with her mind and tampering with the memories of everyone within her power’s range, as she grinned evilly. Humans, like putty in her hands. Oh, the world was hers for the taking. There was only one mind in her range she would not attempt to tamper with, though.

”Maxwell dear,” she said peppily in her reopened telepathic channel with her butler, ”I hope my tea and warm bath are ready. And oh, you will not want to miss tomorrow morning’s news.”

The sun rose, and the news channels were agog with sensational happenings. Even as Sheila awoke and dragged her drowsy body into the upper living room of her mansion, she saw Maxwell standing ramrod-straight as usual, his eyes fixed on the large plasma-screen built into the wall. Then he turned and handed her a teacup already full of steaming tea, as he shifted slightly so she could better see what was showing on TV. For the umpteenth time that morning, the luxurious bed chamber of El Culebro was shown in a news reel, with a strange purplish slush spattered on the wall and down a large chair on which a lifeless skeleton sat, while the nearby mirror had the imprint of a woman’s lips who had kissed the surface, and a message written in lipstick: ‘Love, Juno’. Unfortunately for the cops, while the forensic investigators would be all over the place trying to use cheiloscopy to identify who this Juno was, both Maxwell and his lady knew that they would never succeed, as the lip prints had been telekinetically manipulated by Juno to resemble nothing near her own.

”Well played, ma’am. Well played.”