Text by ArthurGarvin 
Illustrations by Gallows-Girl-Amy 

One Fateful Night

Angela woke up with a start. All of her senses were tingling with a feeling of impending danger, but she didn’t know why. She peered into the blackness of the night and saw nothing, heard nothing, but something was wrong, so she grabbed the pepper-box revolver from her nightstand and got out of bed. She felt a chill come over her as she quietly and carefully walked out of the safety of her bedroom and began searching her house.

Angela froze dead in her tracks when she suddenly heard a muffled sound coming from the parlor. She thought she was alone in her big house but apparently not, so she quietly cocked her revolver and walked through the darkness towards the unknown danger.

Angela’s eyes opened wide and she gasped in astonishment when she saw the shadowy figure of a female intruder in her parlor.

“Stop where you are or I’ll shoot!”



The intruder spun around and aimed her pistol at Angela, but Angela was faster and shot her multiple times, causing the intruder’s shapely body to shudder violently from the impact of each hot slug as she cried out in pain and crumpled to the ground. Angela rushed over to the intruder and cradled the mortally-wounded woman in her arms with surprising gentleness.

“Aw, Ivy!” Angela cried out. “Why’d you have to do a stupid thing like this?!”

Ivy coughed up blood and moaned. Then she looked up at Angela with a hatred burning in her eyes that required no words.

“You know how hard I’m trying to bring peace between us,” Angela reminded her. “You know that!”

“There’ll never be peace!”

“No...don’t say that,” Angela said softly as she wiped away the blood dribbling down Ivy’s chin.

Ivy coughed up some more blood. One of her hands started inching towards a dagger hidden inside a boot but never reached it because her entire body suddenly shuddered uncontrollably and then went limp as she died in Angela’s arms.

The Rivalry

Spring was a beautiful time of the year for most people. The sun shined more warmly and the flowers started blooming anew, so people came out of their winter abodes to enjoy outdoor activities after their winter hibernation, but there was no thawing of the war between the all-female Steampunk and Goth gangs.

Ivy had been the leader of the Goths and Angela was the leader of the Steampunks, and Ivy’s failed attempt to murder Angela proved to be a turning point in the conflict between the two gangs.

There had once been peace between the Steampunks and the Goths, but that peace had been broken over a year ago when the former leader of the Steampunks was killed when her steam-powered bicycle crashed into a barricade as she was being chased by constables. Her death had a disastrous effect on the Steampunks, splitting the gang into several small factions competing with each other for overall control.

When the Goths saw the Steampunks were weakened by in-fighting, they used the opportunity to take territory away from the Steampunks, including taking possession of the shopping district that had been declared as neutral territory by their existing peace treaty.

The Steampunk gang had been on the verge of completely disintegrating into a state of chaos when a charismatic young Angela rose above the in-fighting to re-unify the Steampunks by giving them a renewed sense of identity and a feeling of sisterhood. Angela’s calming influence and leadership skills helped the Steampunks move past their personal differences to provide the cohesion they badly needed to defend themselves against further Goth intrusions and to regain the territory they had lost, but the road ahead for Angela would not be easy.

An important key to Angela’s success was her second-in-command, Artemis, who was a highly-experienced street fighter and tactician. Angela and Artemis made a formidable pair because their talents complimented each other well, with Angela’s idealism and charisma tempered by Artemis’ no-nonsense and practical approach to getting things done and experience fighting the Goths.

Artemis (L) and Angela (R) in Artemis' workshop:

Before Ivy’s failed murder attempt, Angela had offered to hold a summit with the Goths to find a peaceful resolution of their differences. She was convinced her negotiation skills that had worked successfully to unify the Steampunks could also be applied to make peace with the Goths without shedding any more blood, but Ivy had sensed Angela’s success at unifying and inspiring the Steampunks was a threat that couldn’t be ignored. Any peaceful resolution of their differences would leave the Steampunks almost as strong as the Goths, and that was unacceptable to Ivy, so she turned down all of Angela’s overtures for peace.

Ivy had reasoned murdering Angela before she became any more powerful would throw the Steampunks back into the weakened state of chaos that had previously made them easy targets. Of course, Ivy’s plan to murder Angela failed, resulting in Ivy dying in Angela’s arms in her parlor on that fateful night.

After Ivy’s death, leadership of the Goths passed to her daughter, Secretia, who was young and idealistic but lacked the worldly experience of her mother. Secretia had been a romantic, more interested in pursuing Gothic literature and music than gang warfare, right up until Angela killed her mother, and that made the gang war personal for Secretia, giving her a thirst for revenge against Angela.

Secretia’s second in command was Penny, an ambitious sociopath and ruthless enforcer, sometimes little more than a thug, but very effective at commanding the Goths in battle against the Steampunks. Penny loved telling Secretia what the Goths should be doing, but her advice was usually not welcome because it typically required lots of blood being shed by both gangs, which didn’t seem to bother Penny in the least bit. Secretia didn’t trust Penny, but she knew the Goths depended on Penny’s exceptional fighting skills to keep the Steampunks at bay now that Angela and Artemis have turned the Steampunks back into a formidable opponent. Secretia’s mother had skillfully reigned in Penny’s ruthless aggression, but Secretia was still in the process of learning those skills when her mother died prematurely.

Penny (R) offers dubious advice to Secretia (L) in the home Secretia inherited when her mother, Ivy, was killed: