Smike — Roleplayer Guild

Ximena "Ex" Huang
◄  33   ▎   FEMALE  ▎  5'8" ►

P R O F I L E
    Ximena is a professional above all else. Having been raised for a corporate career before joining the tightly structured ranks of the military she believes in keeping things consummate. She doesn't have much in the way of close friends, perfectly capable of being friendly with people but preferring to leave space between her and them. She'll go out for a beer or head over for a barbeque and make pleasant small talk all the while but there's always some level of reservation.

    When on the job, whether it be running guns into Chicago, attending a board meeting, or hunting the undead Ximena acts with purpose. She doesn't agonize over decisions or jump into things blindly, she simply takes the time she needs to identify the solution to her current problem before acting on it. 

    Her family sees a very different side of her. She's able to be a person around them, laughing often and smiling even more. She is devoted to her husband and even more so to her kids, determined to give them an easy life without needing to worry about Border Patrol or rip-off lawyers. 

    She is, of course, entirely terrified that they might end up dead because of her 'hobby'. 

    While her father was not a religious man her mother certainly was. Ximena was raised as a rural form of Folk Catholic. She believes in the Trinity and honors the saints even if the Holy See doesn't quite agree with her definition. While the Supreme Pontiff might object to her shrines to Santa Muerte and Jesús Malverde they have yet to steer her wrong. 
 
D A Y S - G O N E
    Ximena was the product of a changing planet, born two years after the Cold War in the leader of the First World to parents from the Second and Third. Officially, Ximena's father Wei was an early adopter of the economic reforms that began to ripple across China in the late 70s while her mother Jacinta was studying business at the National University in Mexico City. They met when Wei was observing the fabrication company Jacinta was interning at, struck it off, and formed a family. Ximena was born in Arlington, Virginia and was thus the first in her family with U.S. citizenship. She would be groomed for a career building up her parent's burgeoning American business empire but ended up joining the Army. She served with distinction as a member of a Female Engagement Team in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning a Bronze Star for courage under fire when her team was ambushed before returning home to be a businesswoman.

    While this version of events isn't necessarily wrong, it is a series of lies by omission. Wei Huang was no mere entrepreneur but a career smuggler out of Chongqing with ties to both the Triads and local Communist leadership. When the party's grip on business began to loosen he quickly established contacts with criminal elements in Hong Kong and the Western Hemisphere, specializing in the arms trade. The collapse of the Soviet Union opened a treasure trove of weaponry to the highest bidder, weaponry desperately needed by narcoterrorists and street gangs in the Americas.

    Jacinta Molina was the only child of a widowed sicario in the Gulf Cartel, raised into the family business by her father. This was somewhat unusual for a girl but she had a knack for the trade, becoming an accomplished hitwoman and a minor underworld figure in her own right. By the 80s she was regularly running cocaine across the U.S border and assassinating noncompliant cops while attending college for the sake of appearances. When Wei came to Mexico to sort out a ship to the Gulf Cartel it fell on the Molinas to entertain him, thus beginning an international criminal connection.

    Jacinta was drawn to the jet-setting lifestyle and exotic locations Wei visited in his work, and Wei was drawn to an attractive young woman fifteen years his junior. Neither party was particularly in love with the other but they enjoyed each other's company nonetheless and made a very good team. They spent a few years working and traveling together but this would be cut short by the arrival of a child.

    With a daughter in their lives the pair pulled back from the business, settling into more subdued roles shipping guns up the Iron Pipeline and down into Mexico from their home base of Arlington, Virginia. On paper, Wei and Jacinta were running a reputable shipping business specializing in bulk dry goods and they instilled the importance of discretion into Ximena.

    While her parents never hid the origin of their wealth and allowed her to participate it was always clear that the cover came first. This meant excellence in school and sports, a record devoid of even truancy certainly no flashy cars or wild nights at the club. Ximena went to private schools funded by stolen firearms, took part in robotics, chess and soccer competitions over spring breaks and shot AKs on her uncle's ranch in Mexican weed country, and helped to facilitate her first sale at the age of fifteen. 

    By sixteen she had shot a man, making her a professional criminal like her parents. 

    As far as their community, and more importantly, law enforcement was concerned the Huangs were the model immigrant family. They were hardworking people who spoke English and flew the flag, a common sight at barbeques and house parties. So when Huang Sr. was killed in his home no one could understand why. And such in such a grisly way too, his throat torn out so that the bed was soaked through with crimson. 

    Rumors abounded. Was it a serial killer? A sadistic robber? Perhaps punishment for infidelity? None of the suspicions held weight, nobody found any similarly mutilated corpses, and while infidelity was a part of the Huang lifestyle both partners had tacitly agreed to the other's activities.

    Jacinta of course assumed that an old enemy had come for him, a rival from Hong Kong or Guadalajara taking him out like he had so many others. Ximena wasn't so sure. They weren't involved in the drug business and they had always been careful, staying neutral in wider gang conflicts so that their hands stayed clean. And if it was business, why had only he been killed when the whole family was involved?

    She finished high school with top marks at seventeen (it's what her father would have wanted after all) but instead of applying to Berkeley or Dartmouth she allowed herself to be consumed by the mystery. The police had nothing helpful and there was little information to be found on online. Ximena was stumbling blind until she found a breakthrough by chance, when the prepaid rent on a storage unit in her father's name ran out.

    Much of what she found while clearing the place out was useless or uninteresting, probably stolen valuables and mementos from Wei's travels. But there was a key to a safe deposit box and the bank it was in didn't care much about a dead gangster's privacy. Ximena slid the right people the right amounts and was allowed in.

    The documents listed a history of transactions going back to the early 90s, a business so evil Wei had never brought his wife in on it. He had been shipping people across the globe, some kidnapped and others tricked, hundreds of them over the years. Ximena's first guess was sex trafficking but as she followed the trails back to the same few shell companies she found reports of grisly crime scenes and hastily abandoned warehouses.

    She was eighteen when she pieced it together and nineteen when she allowed herself to believe it. Monsters were real, the Cucuy out of her grandmother's ghost stories did stalk the night. Her father had been selling people to vampires and had made the mistake of threatening them.

    It was the kind of shock that made a person leap to rash decisions. Ximena gave her mother barely a day's notice before she shipped out to boot camp, joining the US Army in search of...she didn't know. 

    As a speaker of Spanish, English, and Mandarin she was an attractive choice for a translator. She was given cultural training and taught fluent Arabic as well as conversational Farsi before being sent to join the War on Terror as a member of a Female Engagement Team, supporting male soldiers and special forces by engaging with local women in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    The work suited her, bringing a sense of peace that she hadn't felt since her father's death. The shock of his murder and the discovery of his side business rattled Ximena's morals. She had become keenly aware that her family profited off evil, not the fairly mundane shipping of arms and ammunition but literal blood money. While Ximena would never be considered a good person even she had a line she drew somewhere.

    Upon her honorable discharge at twenty-four, Ximena set out to figure out what she was going to do. Having been raised a devout Catholic by her mother she knew her father had condemned himself to hell but familial ties demanded he be revenged anyway. The monsters he had worked with would be struck down as punishment for his sins and theirs both.

    But just finding them would time, effort and money. Ximena spent nearly five years slowly piecing together the secrets behind the Masquerade, getting glimpses but never a full picture. Werewolves, demons, magic, all sorts of fairytales made real but her focus remained the Undead. Vampires were as smart, if not smarter than she was on top of being stronger, faster, and more durable, trying to tackle every other foe at the same time would be suicide.

    Not that her quest wasn't already. She got very good at ignoring that reality, building a life built on lies for herself just like her father had. She ran guns as was the family tradition, found a good man, and had kids with him. But while her husband knew she was an arms dealer and sometimes murderer he was unaware of her stockpile of silver bullets. He accepted her antithetical belief in God and tolerated the shrines to Santa Muerte and Jesús Malverde while remaining unaware of their true power to her.

    As their children grew from infants to toddlers he asked her to ease off the arms dealing, terrified that she'd be shot dead in front of them. Ximena agreed, even suggesting a move to Baltimore. One of the smaller Huang front companies was located there and was easy enough to convert into a real business. While she wouldn't totally stop practicing the family trade she'd cut back, and become more legitimate.

    Of course, Charles didn't know that she had found allies in Baltimore. The shift in careers was only to facilitate her years-long search for her quarry. Ximena willingly gave up some of her independence to ally with her parent's old organizations, sacrificing personal pride for a more steady stream of work. With the Gulf Cartel and the Triads feeding her contracts, she was able to stop searching for gangsters looking to buy and focus full-time on the Undead.

M E M O R I E S
-James "Jim" Logan: Ximena's husband. They met through a friend and hit it off due to a shared interest in amateur robotics, quickly falling in love. Jim is understandably anxious about his wife's business under the facade of shipping, which is why she wouldn't even dream of telling him about her hunting.

-Ivana and Miguel Logan: Her children, twins at age six. They're bright kids with good futures ahead of them, and Ximena is determined to give them a life of luxury. Her work, legal and illegal, keeps her from seeing them as much as she might like so she tends to spoil them as a way to make up for it.

-The Men Behind The Screen: Ever since she stopped independent sales Ximena's dealings with the bosses down South and out East have been through encrypted connections and messages via courier. She couldn't positively ID the people paying her, and she likes it that way. A professional doesn't need to know anything more than "Route Shipment A through your company to this shell account at Point B."

As long as they pay her on time and give her the resources she needs she'll happily keep working for them.

More TBA as needed.

C R E E D
	𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚊𝚕

D R I V E
	𝚅𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚎𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎

E D G E S & P E R K S
    Arsenal: On paper Ms. Huang possess a Wear and Carry Permit for the state of Maryland, citing a burglary that occurred at her company office while she was working late as her reason for applying. She's regularly renewed said license and has not yet fired a shot in anger.

    Ximena also has access to military-grade weaponry ranging from surplus carbines abandoned after the Second World War to modern machine guns sold off by disgruntled quartermasters, and she's not averse to using them against her enemies living and undead.

    Global Access: While she's not a particularly skilled systems cracker Ximena has access to contacts from multiple international organizations, the triads and the cartels both quite happy to keep tech geeks on payroll. With a cheap burner laptop and a few minutes to contact the right people she can be granted access to pretty much any database she might need to snoop around in.
-Letter of The Law
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