Sylvia had been suspicious of the trenchcoated group from the outset. Stories of "body snatchers" picking people up in the Barrens against their will had been whispered about for a while now in the Jump House, and Sylvia thought this group might be in that profession. Instead, they proclaimed themselves to be part of a small magic society, interested in recruiting Sylvia after seeing one of her magic shows.

Sylvia knew the crowd at the Jump House as well as anyone, and would've certainly remembered seeing one of these six in a crowd. Their eyes, particularly those of Lillian and the aggressive-looking human she called Blood Claw, had a certain glow of insanity to them. Sylvia recognized that eye glow in some down-and-out mages that frequented the Jump House, as well as some of the poorer folk who lived in Glow City (a subsection of Redmond contaminated by the nuclear meltdown, lived in by the most desperate of squatters.) Sylvia guessed from some implications in their recruiting pitch that they actually knew her from the Billy Bones incident two years ago, and that they had found her by tracking traces of her magic down.

Joining a magical society would be an attractive offer, but not this society. So Sylvia declined their offer, some of Lillian's lackeys took exception, and Sylvia ran, throwing a sandwich board at the group and taking off.

But much to her horror, she found out that some of them could use magic to levitate and chase her down. Sylvia panicked and dead-ended herself in the ruins of an abandoned building, and cursed herself for it as the Silver Plane caught up to her. She knew this neighborhood like the back of her hand, but she was in a panic seeing guys literally FLYING through the air to get at her, and took one wrong turn too many.

And now she was cornered, as they had set up a ring of magical barriers that blocked whatever small spells Sylvia tried. Behind her was a concrete wall. In front of her was the barriers. One of them had mentioned they were going to sacrifice her and her totem in a ritual, and Sylvia couldn't even imagine what powerful stuff they would get from that. If she could take garbage and rat hide and use them in a ritual to get something good, what would a body and a totem bring?

Sylvia was panicking. Was this the end for her? Was her life over, at the hands of a crazy group of mages in the worst neighborhood in Seattle?

But as Sylvia looked past the Silver Plane for a way out, she noticed over Lillian's shoulder that a young man with a long black leather trenchcoat was approaching them, and with one lightning-quick motion that Sylvia could barely keep track of, he drew a gun from his holster and fired.

The man called Blood Claw fell with a massive hole in his forehead. The other five mages turned around, and two more of them died instantly under gunfire. The remaining three ducked and cursed, hurriedly dropping their mana barriers and throwing up new ones.

Lillian crouched behind two barriers and flung a ball of mana lightning at the young man, who ducked and rolled under it, and kept firing at the barrier while running sideways, dodging further spells and trying to find a weak spot in the mages' defenses. But there wasn't one.

Sylvia was briefly in shock at seeing three people die instantly, but recovered quickly. She had seen people fight and die before in Redmond, but it didn't involve her, and it didn't even seem so......brutal. Sylvia had to look for a way out. But in an instant, she looked through the astral plane and realized that the mages were protected from the shooter, but they didn't have barriers in front of Sylvia. In fact, in the carnage of seeing their comrades get gunned down, they had forgotten Sylvia entirely......

Sylvia gathered all her energy and willpower and put it into her hidden ace card, the big-time fire spell she had used against Billy Bones and the lady vampire.

Lillian felt a stir of magical particles in the air. She turned around and tried to throw up some sort of defense, but all she could do was watch helplessly, as a brutal curtain of fire consumed her and the rest of the Silver Plane mage society forever, reducing them to piles of ash in the shape of a person.

Sylvia looked through the brief smoke cloud and saw the crumbling bodies of the people who had tried to catch her, chuckled briefly, then felt a spurt of blood come out from her nose, her mouth, and her ears. Sylvia then pitched forward into unconsciousness.

~~~

The young man in the leather trenchcoat wasn't shocked by much, but this was something shocking.

He was preparing himself mentally for a siege-type situation with the mages, sniping at their barrier and hoping the drain would make them drop it. But it seemed the girl they were chasing was also a capable magician, and she let loose a massive spell that incinerated the last three enemies. One moment, there was a giant, explosive curtain of fire, the next moment, there was nothing but smoke, rubble, and ash sculptures that looked like people. One of them had an arm crumble off at the elbow and fall down on the ground.

Was this the legendary Hellblast spell? The young man had heard some mages knew this, and saved it as an absolute last resort, because of the intense physical drain you would experience. But it was second to none when it came to all-out damage and firepower, and you had to be a dragon or something similarly tough to be capable of withstanding such an attack.

The young man looked to the waitress he was trying to save, but saw she was a bloody mess, and then saw her pass out and collapse, almost hitting her head on a concrete block.

"Damn!" shouted the young man, as he hurried over to the fallen girl. It hadn't even been a day since he had stepped off the copter into Seattle, and he'd already gotten roped up in something.

The young man picked her up and made haste to a medical facility. He hoped the nearby Little Chiba clinic was open for business.......

~~~

(3 days later)

Sylvia woke up from what felt like a nightmare of endless falling through a void, and immediately grimaced. She had moved too quickly, and noticed that she had some rather severe pain in her ribs, and a throbbing headache.

Slowly, the memories of how she got into this condition started flooding back. Using that big fire spell had been even more taxing than the first time she used it, because she had fatigued herself a bit by using smaller spells beforehand.

Sylvia looked around and noticed she was in a dingy clinic, with vaguely Oriental decorations on the wall. A needle was hooked up to her left arm, and stickers with wires snaking out from underneath were placed above her breasts. A steady beep-beep from medical equipment rang out beside her.

Sylvia was bewildered. How the hell did she get here? And who was paying for this?

At that moment, a female nurse walked in and put on a fake plastic smile when she noticed Sylvia awake.

"Sylvia, good to see you awake, how are you feeling?"

"......A bit stiff, and I have a headache......where is this place? How did I get here?"

"This is the Little Chiba Clinic in Redmond. A good samaritan brought you in 3 days ago. You're suffering from the effects of physical drain."

"......What is physical drain?"

"You are a magician, correct? Well, physical drain occurs when you overload your organs trying to cast powerful magic. It can cause severe internal bleeding and even death if you're not careful. Doctor Kazuya has ordered you to rest in the bed for at least a few more days, and that you aren't to cast spells until you've had a full checkup."

Sylvia leaned her head back and sighed.

"......It sounds like I can't pay for this."

"You do not need to worry, the man who brought you in is paying for everything. He's here right now talking to Doctor Kazuya, do you want to see him?"

Sylvia dumbly nodded her head in the affirmative. Who the drek had brought her in?

......Then she remembered, it might've been the gunman that came in and saved her by killing three of those mages. It was a dashing rescue straight out of a shadowrunning drama on the trideo......except Sylvia wasn't some helpless damsel-in-distress. She wasn't pretty enough to be the damsel, for one, and second, she was pretty sure she killed the remaining three members of the Silver Plane with her big fire spell.

Sylvia felt like crying. 18 years old, and her body count was already up to 5. Hopefully Lone Star wouldn't come knocking over these three bodies either, but it still ate away at her. Even if they all kinda deserved it......it still bothered Sylvia to see a life taken so easily. Even in these times, with pandemics and nuclear meltdowns and violence on a daily basis in a hellhole like Seattle......

Suddenly, a long-haired young man walked in, wearing a Seattle Supersonics jersey and blue jeans. Sylvia recognized him vaguely as the young gunman who helped her with the mage group......and he was kinda cute. Sylvia didn't get a real good look at him in the midst of battle, and he was wearing a trenchcoat at the time. But now that she saw him...... he had nice long hair, and the sleeveless jersey he was wearing really showed off those arms of his. Sure, they were probably cybernetically enhanced muscles, but......hnnnnnnnng.

"Hey, good to see you awake! I thought you were a goner after that Hellblas-You're really pretty......"

The young man broke off mid-sentence to compliment Sylvia, and he stared at her awkwardly for the next twenty seconds or so.

......This was a new one. Sylvia had been called many things in her life, but had never once been called pretty. Even as a kid, the rare times she got to wear pretty clothes, it was the clothes that got complimented. Sylvia never was. And now here was some young guy with awesome forearms hitting on her in a hospital when she hadn't even been conscious for ten minutes. What was going on?

"......Hey, the doctor says you gotta rest here for a few days......you wanna go out when you get discharged? I know a good jazz place downtown called Matchsticks, they make a great steak and salad."

"......What?"

"......You okay? You need me to get you water or the nurse or something?"

"No, it's just......who are you?"

"Oh right, I didn't get a chance to introduce myself. I'm Wes LaFlamme......but my friends call me Wild Fire......"

~~~

And so, Sylvia met Leon for the first time, under his Seattle alias of Wes LaFlamme.

At first, Sylvia was utterly bewildered by the young man. Who in their right mind would call her pretty? Billy Bones had wanted to essentially rape her, and even he didn't call Sylvia pretty. This was new, and Sylvia felt uncomfortable with the attention at first, figuring that Wes would be expecting bad things in exchange for paying her considerable medical bills.

But, as she resumed her normal daily life waiting tables at the Jump House, she noticed Wes coming there often, chatting with Gunderson and the dwarven owner and the troll bouncers like they were old chums. Wes took runs from Gunderson and got things done as reliably as Sylvia did, except he could handle tasks like bodyguarding and ghoul bounty runs easy. Everyone Sylvia talked to regarded Wes as one of the few good, reliable men you could count on in Seattle.

Wes kept chatting Sylvia up, and bought her expensive magical gifts, and protected her on a couple occasions from drunks browbeating her over her service. Eventually Sylvia realized that Wes was exactly what everyone said he was. He wasn't a rapist like Billy Bones, he wasn't desiring her magical abilities for nefarious purposes like the Silver Plane. For some reason, Wes just saw Sylvia as his dream girl, and even if he couldn't be her lover, he at least wanted to be her friend. In a place like the Redmond Barrens, where arrogance and uncouth behaviour always came cheap, a friend was about as rare as orichalcum. So Sylvia slowly began to warm up to Wes in return.

Then, Wes disappeared to Miami for a year, with word on the street being that a local corp had put a bounty on his head, said to be worth more than a hundred thousand nuyen. Then word came that the corp was absorbed into Shiawase, and the bounty was quickly forgotten. Wes came back soon after with shorter hair and a beard, and even though Sylvia liked his old look better......she realized how much she missed him.

Sylvia finally gave into his advances, and Wes had his long-awaited date with her at Matchsticks. Three dates later, Sylvia gave him her first kiss, and her first time, in the Gates Undersound hotel. She finally got the night of passion she had secretly dreamed of from the trideos, and it was even better than she could have hoped for.

Since then, the two had run the shadows together, pulling in friends when necessary. Wes became a legend, while Sylvia (now with a different alias and different hair) became largely overlooked. Given how her life had gone when she got attention, it suited her just fine, and even as she got annoyed by the bedroom antics of her boyfriend, and how clingy and lovey-dovey he could get sometimes......

......It was better than a life alone in the Barrens......