The Iron Bears march on! Art by  pac

Alma Vaccarello
Species: White Footed Mouse
Age: 25
Nationality: Spain
Background: Former FBI Hacker

Alma Vaccarello was a bright, optimistic, and energetic sort as a child. She always seemed so full of life and energy that her parents didn't think she had a sad or somber bone in her body. They weren't very well off financially and they worked many menial labor jobs to try and keep their little family afloat. Thankfully, young Alma was their only daughter so they didn't have to earn too much extra to keep things tight, but they did create a small savings plan so they could afford a better future for themselves and their little girl. Her parents vowed that, when they made enough money, they would move the three of them to America in hopes for a better life. Madrid was nice, but sadly they didnt have enough of anything to make it very far in this country, so they planned to start over in a new one.

Sadly, on the day that they were finally going to make their voyage, tragedy struck. A young river otter, Javier Perez, came to visit his childhood mouse of a friend to deliver what was the saddest news of her life. He told her that there had been an accident and an industrial fire had broken out. There wasn't too much property damage however two of the factory workers had been killed in the fire.

One of which, was Mateo Vacarrello, little Alma's dear old Dad.

Alma was so grief-stricken that she'd run to the factory hoping that Javier was mistaken. As the bodies were being carried out people tried to cover the little one's eyes, but her small frame allowed her to bypass every last one of them. She got a front row seat to seeing her father's mangled and severely burned body. It was an image that she would never forget.

Javier was right.

Ariana Vaccarello, Alma's mother pretended not to notice, but she saw a little light die inside of her daughter's eyes. Without Mateo, the three tickets they had now only stood as a reminder that one member of their family wouldn't be making that trip with them. Instead, the orphan Javier boarded the plane and they ventured into unknown territory together, now with a new reason to want to leave the old one.

Life in America was rather difficult at first, Alma didn't speak very good English and neither did Javier, finding schools and work was another hurdle that needed to be tackled. Ariana was able to get a nursing job helping the disabled communicate and reintegrate with society. It was through this that both Alma and Javier were able to learn bits of various languages, including sign language, and how to interact with others. Eventually, young Alma and Javier were able to integrate themselves with other children, gradually, and pick up on the different ticks and tricks of the English language. Over time, both Alma and Javier's speech had improved drastically, while still retaining their accents, they both by grade 5 were able to speak perfect English. They even had a small group of friends form various parts of the world that they could talk to.

Alma was able cope with her father's passing and gradually moving toward acceptance through Javier, whom was studying to become a psychologist. From the beginning they each pursued different career paths; Alma took a more theatrical path while dabbling in technics while Javier went full on into anatomy, physiology, and phycology. Despite their varied interests, they both found a sort of comfort in one another, as friends. They agreed that no matter where life took them, they would always stick together through thick and thin. Since Javier didnt have a family of his own, Ariana and Alma were the closest things he had to a mother and sister respectively. Sadly, due to complications in the educational system, Javier was denied scholarship (despite having met all of the prerequisites) and was thus unable to attend medical school to finish his career path. It was then that Alma had decided to full-on switch majors that way she could find a more well-paying job to fund her brother's academics. As it turned out, the young mouse had an extreme fondness, and talent, for technical skills and equipment. Her math and computer scores were always excellent because, as she put it, she felt "in-tune" with machinery. So, by the age of about 23, Alma was able to land a job in the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

While in the Bureau, Alma was just as she'd always been, a good-natured, kind-hearted young girl that always did her best at anything and everything she'd set her mind to. It was perhaps the biggest, most important lesson her mother and father had taught her. Her job was a rather simple one, she was to observe and record files from various organizations and keep records for recorded events. She did her job without fail, and without complaint. That was, until...

Until Alma had come across some information that didnt quite match up with her findings, and by didn't match up, it meant 'not there at all.' Curious, Alma believed it to be a technical issue and tried various methods to bring up the info, interestingly enough, it was nowhere to be found. She had it on paper, but nothing else. Now sufficiently confused, she decided to take matters to the Chief and see if he could provide a solution to this little occurrence. She could archive it no problem, but the basis of the situation didnt make sense. The info was already uploaded and all she needed to do was store it, but when she checked the material again she realized that it was a situation where it wasn't that things simply "weren't there" but instead there were things that "weren't there anymore."

Ever since that day, she'd quickly noticed that she had been getting various looks and glances from her coworkers. Instead of things she'd already archived being downright missing, the slowly saw that files were being changed, altered to still look passable (and still be there in general) but all of the information was tampered with.

Alma had a creeping suspicion that she wouldn't be in the FBI much longer.

Suspicions confirmed.

Alma, while taking a preemptive measure, decided to cut all ties with the FBI and cease any further involvement with them. While she was submitting her last assignment, she noticed that some of the tweaked evidence was leading to her specifically. She soon found that even her own credentials had been falsified-labelling her as an illegal immigrant and a possible enemy combatant to the country. They had essentially labelled her as a terrorist. Now fleeing, Alma and Javier were planning on getting her mother and going back to Spain. When she'd asked him to get the car started while she grabbed her things (namely her laptop) all she heard was the slight sound of the engine followed by a sudden, concussive explosion that shook her to the very core.

Praying it was wrong, Alma ran outside to the flaming wreckage that was her car. She saw a full-on replay of her father's death, only this time the leading actor...was Javier. All she had left of him, was a piece of his ear landing on her doorstep.

It was now that little Alma, had finally broke.

Her bright and shining demeanor had now been replaced with paranoia and resentment. She knew the purpose of that bomb, and now she was out for revenge. Her resources where gone and her accounts were frozen. She's had many assassination attempts made on her since, however the government still kept things tight lipped about her situation altogether. Saying that they'd settle it amongst themselves. Alma isn't stupid, far from it. She created a virus that seized and corrupted all of their primary sources of information. She'd essentially disabled them for a good while. During that time, they'd kept up the façade that everything was okay.

That virus had destroyed pretty much all of the information regarding her and her findings. Meanwhile, she still had a copy of all the data on her personal drives. Alma used her computer and language skills to evade the government until she could find a way to expose them. However she quickly realized that they had more at their disposal than her. So she’d been on the lamb until she’d met the person responsible for killing her best friend. The source of the car bomb, a young mare named Amanda DiFranco.

The mare didn’t talk, however Alma recognized her face similar to one of the men that had been killed during a drug bust that the goverment had 'conviently' covered up. That particular incident was one of the things that was covered up by the government. Upon further investigation, she realized that a Former US Marine among the casualties had been pinned for being a spy for the cartel and thus his ‘death’ became a necessity to shift the blame and free the government of their obvious involvement in the cartel at all.

He was a patsy.

That man was Austin DiFranco. Facial recognition and info presented to the mare gave her more insight into the nature of her father’s death. It seemed as if her vengeance wasn’t quite completed yet either. In exchange for the information, Amanda then accepted Alma's plea to give her sanctuary within the Iron Bears. Making Alma the 10th member. She serves as their eyes and ears through her various machines. While not as combatitve as the others, Alma's skills lie in her ability to hack virtually anything and everything. Listening devices and security cameras are a piece of cheesecake when this mouse is involved. Little did either of them realize, but their coinciding quest for vengenance had sparked a little something more between the mare and mouse, while a few of the members don't know it yet, however Grigori can see a clear line of love between the two.

Alma's mission is to exposed the goverment for the monsters that they are and the monsters they protect...even if it means becoming a monster herself.



Again, this is not one of my characters. The character and backstory is all the work of my good friend  rodneythedivinedevil Many thanks, good Civet!