| IMBEL MD-4 Pulson Modified FAL, Heckler & Koch PSG1 Pulson Modified Sniper Rifle, Heckler & Koch MP5 Pulson Modified SMG, M1911 Pulson Modified Handgun, M136 AT4 Anti-Tank Weapon, Barret M107A1 Anti-Material Rifle, RKG-3 Anti-Tank Hand Grenade, XM84 Stun Grenade, M18 Smoke Grenade, C4 Plastic Explosives, Model 8 Pulson Shock Grenade, Trench Knife, Adrenal Stimulant, Regenerator, Rebreather, Grappling gun, Costum Ammunition Model ALTO, "Vestido Forte" Kinetic Battlesuit, "Vestido Sombra" Stealth suit.
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Early Years
Raquel Amanda Gabriela Silverio was born the 3rd child out of 5 in a poor working class family living in the heart of the Brazilian favela, the shanty town of Rocinha, Rio de Janéiro. Her father and her older brothers worked as underpaid labour whereever they could, while Raquel helped her mother and grandmother to look after her younger siblings. While life was hard and unforgiving, Raquel was blessed with a loving and tight-knit family. But time passed and her father eventually turned ill when Raquel was 7 years old. Desperate for money, her older brothers, Jorge and Fabio, turned to a local crime lord and drug dealer for work. The physical labour throughout their lives had made her brothers tough and hardy, and being from the favela made sure noone would miss them, the perfect kind of disposable grunts. They ended up becoming debt collectors, walking from shanty to shanty and extorting sometimes imaginary debts from the poor residents, by any means necessery. Raquel's mother was furious when she found out, but her brothers insisted that they did it for their father and refused to step down.
But even so, their efforts ended up being in vain as Raquel's father succumbed to his illness before Jorge and Fabio had amassed enough money for his treatment. Their mother, devastated, begged them to reconsider their affiliation with the local drug lord but they again refuse, claiming that with their father dead they needed the money now more than ever. That was an arguement neither Raquel nor her mother could fight, because it was indeed true. Raquel was 8 years old at this point.
Another 6 years would pass and Raquel's family was doing better. Jorge and Fabio had risen in the ranks and had started to bring in the big money, though it had cost the entire neighbourhood's trust in the Silverio family. And eventually, Raquel's brothers got in over their head. Caught in the crossfire of a deal gone bad with a rival druglord, they both lost their lives in a flash. Raquel's mother was stricken with grief, having outlived two of her children, and their family once again fell on hard times. When then Raquel's younger sister, Maria, fell ill like her father had before, Raquel was now forced into working hard like her siblings had before her. Desperate, she approached the drug lord that had employed her brothers against her better knowledge, knowing fully well that he was her best shot at money. While he was no saint, far from it, the drug lord knew that there was always money to be had with desperate young girls who had run out of options. Officially, the 14-year old Raquel was hired as a Maid at the drug lord's mansion, which was nothing short of a front for a bordello and drug den. Raquel believed that this would be her life from now on, but that was before the man known as Victor Cruz stepped into it, a Revolutionary with a message.
Revolutionary Years
Raquel hadn't even begun "Working" at the bordello before the man known as Victor Cruz stepped in. He was a tall, handsome man with flowing black hair, dressed in a white suit and flowery shirt. When Raquel first met with him, he had stepped into the bordello with a declaration of war, and a message of revolution. Claiming to be an agent of someone known only as "The Baron", he made a theatrical announcement to the workers of the bordello to join him in their "righteouss cause". When the men of the local drug lord pulled their guns, the whole building was flooded with armed soldiers who quickly dispatched them all. Rounding up all the workers and ushering them outside, Cruz made his final statement by setting the giant mansion ablaze and once again offering the collected girls the chance to join the Baron's Army. Many said no, and they were surprisingly sent on their merry way with a word of condolence from Cruz, but those who said yes were promptly given a gun and an armband, on spot, and told to aim for what the soldiers were aiming for. Raquel herself had gotten entirely mesmerised by the strange man's performance. In her eyes, he was like a superhero, here to vanquish the evil and save the poor and the suffering from their torment. Impressionable as she was, she didn't hesitate a second to answer his call. However, she was not ready for what was to come.
Cruz literally took the war to the streets of the favela and straight to the local drug lords. She saw as his men worked systematically to eliminate each and everyone of them, eficient and ruthless as killing machines. It took them only one evening to purge almost the entire favela before they retreated. All the while, Cruz spread his message among the people living there, amassing followers with each footstep. Raquel asked if there was a chance for her to see her family off, but Cruz insisted that there was no time, though he promised her as he promised everyone present that their families would be looked after in their absence. Raquel didn't learn of this as a lie until many years later.
A teenaged Raquel fighting in the Amazonas
Teenage Years
With the recruits he had gathered, Cruz retreated into the Amazonas, hiding away from prying eyes among the untouched wilderness. There, boot camp began. No division was made among the recruits. Young and old, men and women all trained, ate and slept together throughout the basic training. But it was brutal, unforgiving and utterly merciless. Most of the recruits didn't have it in them and many collapsed from exhaustion or fled the camp during the training. Those who were only average or underperforming were soon removed from the main group into a "reserve troop". Raquel, on the other hand, persevered only through her willpower and her idolization of Cruz, forcing herself past her limits time and again in order to impress him. Her zealous effort and unquestionable loyalty eventually caused him to catch eye of her, leading the man to study the young girl's growth over the course of the training.
2 years after she had been drafted into the revolutionary army, she was sent on her first mission, ordered to attack an ARGENT wildlife foundation located deep in the Amazonas. The building was heavily fortified and well-protected, both by ARGENT troopers and mechanized units.
Raquel had been put on the bomb squad, tasked with infiltrating the compounds and planting explosives throughout the fight while the other units held ARGENT's attention. This was most likely what saved her life, as most of the soldiers on the bomb squad were already trained soldiers of the revolutionary army. Some of them where not all too happy with having the "Favela Brat" on their team, but Raquel sucked up their insults in silent defiance, only caring for one thing: To prove her worth in the eyes of Victor Cruz, as she was entirely convinced that him putting her on the bomb team was a vote of confidence on his part and she would rather die than let him down. It was thanks to this zealotry that she managed to close her eyes and cover her ears to the screams of her fellow soldiers who died down on the field acting as a diversion. Instead, she flawlessly carried out her mission, her smaller stature and nimble body proving very adept at infiltration and subterfuge, something her fellow soldiers caught on to. After this mission, she was assigned to the Covert Operations team permanently. In time, their attitude towards their new "little sister" changed, and Raquel quickly came to like it with her new team, performing several successful raids and sabotage missions against all manners of targets, including governments, ARGENT, VIPER and even UNTIL. Throughout the years, Raquel grew ever more zealous and lyoal to the Baron's cause and forgot almost everything of her old life. For 15 long years did she fight alongside Cruz and his team as an infiltrator and spy, being active behind the scenes all over the world. USA, France, Germany, China, Japan, no place were there that the Baron's influence didn't reach and under the radar, Raquel worked feverishly to further his dream of a new world order. Among her peers, she was given the moniker of "Favela", a nod to her origins and because "Favela Brat" didn't quite cut it when she grew into a woman. In time, even Cruz started to notice Raquel as a woman and the two began an intense romance, despite him being over 15 years her senior.
August 27th, 2003
Even so, their life was a turbulent and violent one. Even though the Baron worked mostly behind the scenes to avoid being seen by UNTIL and other peace-keeping forces, the odd skirmish with them wasn't beyond the norm. Cruz, being one of the more prominent figures in the Baron's "2nd Army", often stood on the frontline alongside his troops, leading every battle personally in order to inspire their trust and loyalty. And while Raquel would love nothing but to stand at his side, she knew fully well that her role was as a shadow, working alone in the darkness to further their goals. But time passed, and with no "revolution" in sight, even Cruz grew disillusioned. He urged Raquel to leave the fight, every time they were apart seemed to eat him from the inside out knowing she was alone in enemy territory. Of course, Raquel refused to leave, believing whole-heartidly that the "revolution" was coming, they just needed to spark the flame. She managed to convince Cruz that all was well and so he stayed with the revolutionary army. Two months later, on August 27th, Cruz' team was given the order to secure a missile platform built by VIPER in the heart of the Amazonas jungle. While they had fought VIPER before, this missile base was heavily fortified and even said to house Metahumans. Nonetheless, Cruz deviced a plan for taking it down. He sent Raquel to infiltrate the compound under nightfall, ordered to disable security and communications while the rest of the army would create a diversion. Everything went as smoothly as it ever had at the beginning. Raquel easily infiltrated the compound while VIPER's forces were busy fighting against the diversion team, lead by Cruz. They were in their element and used to dark of the jungle to launch quick, successive hit-and-run raids, never giving their enemy a shot at rest. Once inside, Raquel managed to disable their communications and security, and gave the signal to Cruz to charge in.
But they were all walking straight into a trap, devised by the VIPER master tactician Stanislav Zakov. Having already anticipated their strategy, he had kept the majority of the base's forces hidden within the base and then caught Cruz' team in a pincer maneuver as soon as they entered the compound. Raquel rejoined their forces only in time to see them slaughtered at the hands of VIPER's Draysha enforcers. She was about to rejoin them, but Cruz saw her before VIPER did. In a last gesture of his love to her, he convinced her to turn and run without a word, staying behind to fight the VIPER forces until death while a distraught Raquel fled into the jungle, disappearing into the darkness of the Amazonas for years to come.
UNTIL Years
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Brazilian, 
American Immigrant
