Emily "Thunder" Saunders

### Aliases

“Sunshine” (personal nickname), “Thunder”, “Wrath” (mostly by people who mix her up with her tank)

### Likes

Gwen, Fish and chips (picked up from her girlfriend), Her tank, Action movies. Fried food, particularly chicken fried steak, Baseball, Parties

### Dislikes

Desk jobs, Overly girly outfits, Doing nothing

## Magic

### Principle

Storm

**Emily Saunders**, also known as "Sunshine" for her cheery personality, or "Wrath" and "Thunder" for her access to a modified World War 2 tank, is a member of the Snake Tong, formerly from General Affairs and causing shock and awe with her tank, now a member of the Human Resources division. She has since been an active figure in recruiting and helping potential members of the organization, as well as become a, as she would say, "Something of a diplomat myself".

## Background

Emily was born into a family of American magi that make their living through mercenary work. Selling their services to the local magus organizations, individual magi, magically aware non-magi, etc. As such she was raised to one day become a part of the family business, learning their magic, hand-to-hand combat, and how to handle modern weaponry.

Once she was eighteen her parents started taking her out on jobs with her older siblings and eventually she was able to start taking solo or duo jobs. She took jobs all over, as long as the pay was enough to make up for travel costs and time, though mostly still in America. She enjoyed the action and the new experiences this life gave her, the pay certainly didn’t hurt either.

Eventually she unknowingly took a job that was in Snake Tong territory. Shiai-shi is generally very teritorial but she was fortunate in that she happened to meet two of the more friendly agents on this job, “Okie” and “Colonel”. They were fellow Americans and more importantly more open to talking than just driving her off Snake territory by force. They finished the job with her and offered to bring her into the Snakes. Emily was interested by the idea of working with a larger group and accepted.

She worked solely in general affairs for a few years, protecting snake interests, working for clients, the usual. Her most memorable job though was one time when she and a team of 2 other general affair agents were dispatched to eliminate a magus. They succeeded in reaching her without issue but her death caused an alert to all her security. The team was outnumbered but through quick thinking and having just watched “Fury” a few days ago, Emily remembered the magus was an avid collector of war time artifacts, including one fully functional M4 Sherman. She got them into the tank and they proceeded to blast their own exit and drive out. After that mission she requested and was given permission to keep the tank for being the one to think of it and get everyone out. After this mission she eventually got her nickname of “Thunder”, partly for her loud personality, partly for the thunder of the tank firing, partly for the American rolling thunder operation, and partly for her magic.

Eventually Human Resources also became interested in her, believing that her genuine, cheerful, and outgoing attitude would be perfect for recruiting more agents. This has led to her meeting people like Naomi who needed help with vengeance and Brita who needed the money provided by a job with the Sneks to pay a debt. Although Emily didn’t directly recruit her she also met one Gwendolyn Darjeeling Gloriana.

One day Emily was at a barbecue. Gwendolyn was trying to find her rental house after representing her family in a business meeting. She mistook the party house for her rental since the two were next to each other and nearly identical. Gwendolyn tried to excuse herself but Emily assured her there was no harm in her staying and ultimately Gwendolyn decided that she might as well. They got off to a bit of a rough start when Emily tried to offer her a soda, not realizing she was fine with her tea, but they didn’t hold each other’s taste against the other.

At the party Gwendolyn ended up meeting a lieutenant of the Tong’s corporate and logistics division who convinced her to enter a business arrangement with RusCorp and personally join the division to represent her family’s interests. After this Emily began making efforts to befriend Gwendolyn, she got the sense that she was the type who liked to socialize but had a hard time initiating. Sure enough she was correct and they became friends, then eventually a couple.

Emily continues work as a recruitment agent and scout for the Snakes, finding talented individuals who would make a good fit with the tong. Occasionally she still likes to join General Affairs on a mission and is quite content with her situation.

## Personality

Emily got the nickname “Sunshine” from friends and family for her unusually cheerful attitude for a mercenary and her golden hair. One may think from her demeanor that she’s a chearleader instead of a gun-for-hire. Almost always smiling, she loves to have fun, talk with others, and make friends.

Her cheerful attitude often extends even to missions. While she doesn’t enjoy killing itself she does like engaging in magic battles and seeing her tank make things go boom. She’s also fond of saying “Cavalry’s here” when she shows up as reinforcements with her tank. Some of her co-workers find this odd while others find it reassuring.

Although she has a bit of a happy-go-lucky attitude, she is a solidly reliable individual. She makes sure to fulfill her contracts, offers help to friends in need, etc. If she says she’ll do something she’ll do it. If she can’t she’ll own up to it and ask if there’s something else that needs doing.

On the rare occasion that she does get mad or angry at someone she generally gets it all out at once. She doesn’t want to act like everything’s fine and she doesn’t want to hold a grudge forever. There are exceptions of course, big things that even she can’t forgive people for after a big initial outburst, but overall she’ll generally be back to normal after a couple hours or days.

Emily loves her girlfriend very much and both have met each other's families, Emily had to learn some high class etiquette first but didn’t mind for Gwen. She remembers all the important dates like their anniversary, birthday, valentines, and anything unique to them too. She often uses her job with the snakes to buy rare and high quality tea ingredients since she knows how much Gwen likes it.

## Abilities

### Martial arts

Emily has trained to fight since she was a young girl and is no slouch in a melee. Since joining the Snakes she has learned many martial arts styles and has sort of combined them into her own way of fighting, hard to predict and identify due to the variety. Unfortunately the lack of focus also means she’s no master martial artist from a kung-fu movie but she can certainly make do against the average opponent.

### Firearms usage

Emily is also familiar with the operation of modern weaponry, most prominently firearms. However she does generally prefer, in this order, her tank, her magic, and good old fisticuffs. Still she always keeps at least a handgun as a sidearm. She is a competent shooter but isn’t like unit 3 or unit 9’s sharpshooters.

### Reading people

A part of being a successful recruitment agent and outgoing individual is that Emily is very familiar with reading body language, vocal patterns, etc. She can spot most liars, figure out people pretty well from a first impression, and guess at people’s intentions.

### Magic

The Saunders have long studied the mysticism of weather and how to influence and/or mimic it. Although the Decay makes large-scale alteration or generation difficult, if not impossible, for the average mage they continued their research. The family generally tends to style their spells on specific weather phenomena such as tornadoes or blizzards. Emily chose thunderstorms.

She is able to generate storm clouds around her or take advantage of existing storms and direct them in her favor. These clouds can then shoot out lightning, hailstones, wind blasts, etc.

### Equipment

**“Saunders” Jacket**

Emily’s trademark jacket that she is almost always wearing, named after her. The jacket did not originally have its own designation as the visual design was personally conceived and custom requested by Emily who preferred a more casual look to the usual suits. The design has caught on with some other members that also prefer the easygoing style and as such it has received its own name. It is just as protective as the normal uniform and although they don’t have a special designation like the jacket, the rest of the outfit she wears on missions is also up to protection standards.

**“Saunders” Tags**

Another variation on the usual uniform that she come up with, in this case it’s her counterpart to the shroud ties. Normally disguised as neckties, she instead chose to make hers look like dog tags to fit her style. Upon pulling and filling them with aether the tags turn into a mask that afford her head the same protection as the rest of the outfit. For her personal mask design she chose a star with a lightning bolt across it.

**Shiai-shi key**

The standard issue weapon of a snake. Made with special material that can disperse magical energy to do things like create holes in bounded fields or prevent an enemy from reinforcing something. She had hers shaped like a combat knife to go with her tank and dog tags but generally tries to avoid over using it for combat as the material is more fragile than most knives.

**“Wrath”**

The M4 Sherman tank that she acquired on a mission, the name is inspired by the movie that helped her think of using the tank. While a tank is of course fairly formidable on its own she also had it heavily customized and magically modified to fit better with her jobs. This includes things like adding hull mounted guns to the sides and back, altering the controls so that a single person can feasibly crew it, modifying the guns to fire magical bullets and such to save on ammo space, making the walls see through from the inside so she doesn’t have to peak her head out, reinforced armor so it can stand up to magic and modern weaponry, etc. Costed her a pretty penny to get all that but in her words “worth it for a badass magical tank”.