Javier Gowan-Tamay, Nagual Troublemaker

Stats:
PRO 13 Grapple/Wrestling 15
ATH 12
STR 17
AWA 11
WIL 12 Stubbornness 14
ROG 13

Tonali: Fingal, giant bull

Faith:
Inverran Faith [War God/Hearthmother/Jester] 7

Powers:
Heartbonding Magic - drawing from his own emotions and those of Fingal, he can fuel the following magical spheres:

• Ochre [Fauna]
• Kizadhi [War]
• Azure [Meta]

Skills:
Firearms [pistol-use] 14
Marksmanship [rifle-use] 13
Survival (Forest/Hills) 13
Tactics 11
Hunting 12
Tracking 11
Driving 10
Piloting (Light Aircraft) 9
Bull-tending 15
Horseback riding 12
Cooking 10
History 11

Lores:
Ruiz Lore 9
Gift Lore 8
Legend Lore 6

Inventory:
Jara Damaskian Power Rifle with Arcane Barrel and Hypersight (+4 to hit with optics and recoil reduction, sound reduction for hearing protection)
Littany Lite-Tech Pistol with Panoptic Package and Arcane Barrel (+4 to hit with optics, night sights, tactical light, and laser sight, sound reduction for hearing protection)
Utility survial knife (+3/+3)
Travel gear/clothes
Ticket to Ruiz

---

We had just come in from a mission – I still can't say which one. It will probably be classified until after I'm dead and gone. But we'd done well. We'd gotten what we needed without any casualties. Well, to our side. There are always casualties to the other guys. In this case, quite a few.

When I signed on, an older sergeant told me I wasn't here to die for my country. I was here to make other people die for their country. Or corporate sponsors. Or whoever. We took that to heart, and we were damned good at it. We'd done that so well they decided to give us all medals.

We gathered in a small, gated park on a bright, sunny day, early summer warm with a cooling breeze. There were trees all around, and even the birds were singing. If you listened hard enough, you could hear the bellows of the giant bulls in the distance.

The ceremony wasn't public. It was only open to people with enough security clearance to know that we were Troublemakers. It was no secret that we'd been soldiers of Inverray, but you don't want a Troublemakers roster getting out, or there will be reprisals, assassins, the whole thing. Tana, my girlfriend – ex-girlfriend, now – was still getting her clearance, so she wasn't there.

I wasn't allowed to tell her, but she knew what I was. She knew I was a Troublemaker the first time she laid eyes on me. She was like me, the descendant of immigrants, and just like me, four generations of her family had served. But she never knew what I really did. In the Inverray nagual community, the daughter of a soldier, she was expected to marry a soldier. The son of a soldier, I was expected to be one.

She always had my attention. She was the perfect distraction. I never had any questions when I was with her. I still wonder if any of this would have happened if she'd gotten her clearance papers in just one week earlier.

We're standing on this little concrete platform. Right then it was stage. In an hour, it would go back to being a place for the on-base kids to race their toy cars. All our security-cleared family and friends are there, watching, maybe fifty people. And the minister of defense himself stands up to give a speech.

I don't remember what he said, honestly, some suit-speak about protecting life, liberty, and the Inverray way. I just remember looking out at the crowd, seeing kid brothers, little sisters, and young recruits looking at us like we were gods. And I saw those same faces, men and women, in a half-dozen different uniforms, twisted, frozen in death, screaming in pain even after their life had gone. It started with the ones who'd earned me this medal, and expanded to all the others, on all the other missions. Thirty-nine, that I can confirm. There may have been more from shrapnel or blood loss or infections. But thirty-nine that I know of.

And the more that suit talked, the louder they screamed. When the suit stopped talking and handed me my medal, they stopped screaming. The last one I killed, a corporate conscript who hardly even needed to shave, turned his dead eyes to me and said, "You know what to do."

I bought my ticket to Ruiz that afternoon.

Tana broke up with me. She said I'd betrayed her, but I know the truth. She was a soldier's daughter, and she would be a soldier's woman. She was Inverray Nagual, like me, and that was the way we were. She'd taken up with Sean from my unit before the ink was dry on my discharge. If you knew her, you'd know that was as sure as sunrise or gravity. It's hard to be angry at gravity.

My folks may never speak to me again. My family didn't understand. None of the Inverray Nagual did. But considering how quickly and cleanly my discharge came through, and how generous the terms were, I wonder if MacBoon might. Then again, giving me an antitank gun "for the bugs" may have been one more test.

It doesn't matter. Chances are, I'll never see any of them again. I think I can live with that, as long as it means I don't reach forty.