In Quentin Tarantino’s magnum opus Pulp Fiction, we’re given snippets of information about a failed television pilot Mia Wallace starred in, called "Fox Force Five." We get capsule outlines of the Fox Force members, names for two of them and a description of Raven McCoy’s bad joke gimmick... and that’s really about it.

For some unfathomable reason, the idea of taking this tiny snippet of metafiction and filling it out into a full – and rather naughty – series of stories caught at the edge of my brain, continuing to re-emerge over several years. If the truth be told, I’m not much of a fan- or fetish-fictioner, and these adventures are my first (and probably only) expedition into either arena. So why the Fox Force Five? No idea, I expect I’ll be needing a therapist to sort that one out. But finally, I sat down at a keyboard to figure out where I could go with it, and what eventually emerged was the Foxx Force Five, given independent life and ready to undertake deliciously perilous adventures in a universe all their own.

Right now, I have outlines for two full-length Foxx Force Five adventures, starting with the Operation: Foxx Hunt storyline discussed here. As I plunge forward with the actual writing, I’m finding I need a place to keep all the characters and place names straight in my head... and I’ve gotten requests from readers for such a reference guide as well. So this is it.

These stories draw a lot of their basic inspiration from Sixties and Seventies spy films and action series – early Bond films, Our Man Flint, Danger: Diabolik!, Charlie’s Angels, The Champions, The Avengers, The Man (and Girl) from U.N.C.L.E.– as well as Euro noir comics like Satanik, hentai like Yamamoto Atsuji’s excellent Ammo series, and a general soup of contemporary action flicks, anime and manga. As such, these are basically espionage / "action girl" heroines. The setting does include some tongue-in-cheek metafiction about caped and masked heroines and plays around with the concept from time to time, but they’re not planned to be part of the action in any very literal way (sorry if that sounds vague, you’ll have to read the stories to see what I mean).

As far as the fetish and sexual content goes: there’s lots of bondage, spanking, forced sex (sometimes quite violently so), and occasionally whipping, as well as some persistent mind control / drugging themes and no small amount of barely-legal teen participation in all of the above. Very astute readers may notice I have something of a fondness for the "female ejaculation." Oddly, I apparently have a bit of a thing for sexualized combat sports, too, which I hadn’t really realized until I noticed the frequency with which they were turning up in these stories. It’s nowhere near the extreme limits of where BDSM porn can and often does go, but it’s certainly not for the timid either.

There’s also lots of plot, so be warned.

As for the stories’ attitude toward the heroines: I personally find it most interesting to work with heroines who are genuinely smart, capable and heroic (and whose peril therefore seems, to me, more meaningful), and who don’t necessarily find themselves in sticky situations because they’re weak or plain stupid. On the other end of things, I usually hanker for villains – especially the major villains – who are genuinely villainous, the sort of people who Must Be Stopped.

Do the heroines win in the end? Well... it depends on your definition of "win." About all I can tell you is that there won’t be any "the heroines are shipped off into slavery" endings. For more detail, you’ll just have to read and see.

5’10" 36B-24-35, light brown hair (blonde as "Lainey Raine"), age 23

Abilities: Has developed the teasing and seduction of men into a high art form, is no slouch as a martial artist and pretty handy with a pistol or a knuckleduster when all else fails. Voted most likely to "provide a distraction."

Description: The only one of the Foxxes to have actually started her career in the modelling industry, Mylene was on track to become a top-flight supermodel and was praised by her agent as "the next Gisele Bundchen." She has the body and the perfection of facial features to back it up. Does she really look like The Body? Maybe somewhere between her and Ana Lucia Dominguez, or something... or a woman with Gisele’s sculpted features and Ana Lucia’s animated sexiness.

5’0" 34D-22-36 (or 36DD-22-36 when "enhanced"), short black hair, age 19

Abilities: A knife-fighter second to none, she once killed a Boryokudan (yakuza) boss with a thirty-yard throw.

Description: The Goth/alt-cutie representative among the Foxxes, Raven McCoy supposedly looks so much like a younger version of Diablo Cody that there’s a running joke in the media about the two never being seen together in the same place. (This resemblance is probably overrated, knowing the press, but they have the same basic type of winsome beauty.) Raven’s devastating feminine curves, though, are more reminiscent of someone like Melyssa Ford.

5’1" 38DD-24-38 (or 42DDD-24-38 when "enhanced"), pale blonde, age 24

Abilities: Eidetic memory, keen intuition and expert marksmanship.

Description: A Nordic-looking blonde, she’s compared at one point to an image in a Frank Frazetta painting, and visually speaking is partly inspired by (for those who remember this) the naked, stacked blonde who is brought onstage in the prison theatre to "test" Alex after he’s been "cured" in A Clockwork Orange. Her facial features would be comparable to someone like Anna Kournikova for finely-chiseled beauty (the resemblance of her real name to Kournikova’s is not coincidental). She has a distinctive, slightly husky voice.

Satin Rayne (a.k.a. The Black Bombshell):

5’5" 34D-22-40, dark brown hair with light brown highlights, age 21

Abilities: World-class demolitions expert, and no slouch with an assault rifle.

Description: She has light coffee-coloured skin, green eyes and pouty, kissable lips, and in the symmetrical perfection of her features is often compared to Beyonce... though she claims to think of herself as prettier. (In all honesty, she’s in some ways a physical surrogate for the enormous number of brown-skinned beauties that I fall in love with on a daily basis, and my mental image of her is always slightly in flux as a result. Maybe she has facial features more like Angel Melaku, or Noemie Lenoir? Totally possible.)

5’8" 34B-24-36, black hair, age 24

Abilities: One of the world’s top hand-to-hand fighters, a preternatural talent with devastating expertise in kung fu, judo, jiujitsu and capoeira.

Description: A flawless Eurasian beauty with freckled skin, almond-shaped eyes and a long, shining, silky mane. The description will probably call Lucy Liu to mind for many, though I actually envisage her as looking more like a sort of cross between Zhang Ziyi and Evangeline Lilly... but, you know, whatever.

The Foxx Force Five & Operation Freedom: When the sudden spike in criminality in Island City became a national embarrassment, the White House commissioned an Island City Vice Taskforce to deal with the problem. The Taskforce came up with the idea of Operation Freedom, an expensive and high-profile assault on New Amsterdam’s criminals that would hopefully generate the needed publicity just in time for the next Presidential election cycle.

Operation Freedom employs local law enforcement alongside agents from the FBI, CIA, NSA and DEA, but its central operatives are the Foxx Force Five. All of the Foxxes are mistresses of disguise and very capable in the basic running, fighting and shooting skills that their work as spies demands of them. The Kitts, planned to be 21 Jump Street-style teen operatives, were on their way to being fully trained in all these basic areas... but none were finished their training before the events of Operation: Foxx Hunt overtook them.

5’10" 36B-24-35, (40DD-24-35 enhanced), light brown hair (blonde as "Lainey Raine"), age 23

Abilities: Has developed the teasing and seduction of men into a high art form, is no slouch as a martial artist and pretty handy with a pistol or a knuckleduster when all else fails. Voted most likely to "provide a distraction."

Description: The only one of the Foxxes to have actually started her career in the modelling industry, Mylene was on track to become a top-flight supermodel and was praised by her agent as "the next Gisele Bundchen." She has the body and the perfection of facial features to back it up. Does she really look like The Body? Maybe somewhere between her and Ana Lucia Dominguez, or something... or a woman with Gisele’s sculpted features and Ana Lucia’s animated sexiness.

Personality & Background: The Parisian beauty Mylène came to Operation Freedom on account of having almost gone from being a rising fashion star to a tragic statistic during a seemingly innocuous visit to Tokyo. She and Keiko came to Max Fawkes’ attention at the same time, presumably as a result of the same incident, which most likely took place at the hands of the Boryokudan (yakuza).

Of all the Foxxes, Mylène is probably the most sexually experienced. Unfortunately, most of that experience has been negative – part of the backroom sleaze of the fashion industry – and as a result, she does not in normal circumstances care much for either men or sex. She views men on the whole as relatively simple creatures, and sees her skills as a "super-seductress" as being analogous to lion-taming – a more accurate term for her would be "super-tease." As the events of Operation: Foxx Hunt reveal, though, she does still have a couple of secret fetishes: one for the voice of Max Fawkes, and the other for muscular, predatory-looking (and perhaps specifically Black) criminal men.

In a rarity for a woman of her extraordinary beauty, Mylène gets along well with other women; with her charm, humility and slightly goofy sense of humour, she’s equally at home with all her fellow Foxxes. She is deeply committed to her job, and highly effective at it – among all the Foxxes she is probably the most skilled at "inhabiting" a cover identity, to the point where she can maintain her cover and continue to carry out her mission priorities even under extreme duress.

Abilities: Aside from the knowledge and experience he’s gained through decades of being a spy, Max Fawkes demonstrates considerable gifts for concentration and mental discipline, an extraordinary ability to read and manipulate people he encounters, and an intuitive "sixth sense" for the presence of danger.

Description: A forgettable-looking fortyish Caucasian man of average height and build, maybe just a touch overweight and sporting short salt-and-pepper hair. His unremarkable appearance is one of the key advantages he relies upon in his work.

Personality & Background: Max is an old Company (C.I.A.) hand who has worked all over the world, especially in Asia, dealing with the worst of the worst in places like Cambodia. It’s a measure of the seriousness of the situation in Island City that Operation Freedom brought him in; he technically shouldn’t be working domestically but the current Administration has found ways around that. (Presumably it’s not the first time he’s worked domestically, though, since he has a prior working relationship with Johnny Mosley.) He has worked under so many cover identities that sometimes he has trouble remembering his real name.

Despite his cynical and often grimy profession, Fawkes commands the respect and admiration of anyone who encounters him–even his enemies—and he got involved in Operation Freedom for idealistic reasons: he was genuinely hopeful about its chances to heal the fraying social fabric in Island City and rescue and rehabilitate the young victims who’d been targeted by the forces of evil. It was his idea to recruit female agents to spearhead the effort, women who would be motivated by their brushes with the dark forces of vice in Island City to fight their hardest against it.

Operation: Foxx Hunt begins with Max’s capture by the sinister forces of the Syndicate, and his exposure to the drug Alethex, which leads him to ravish a girl planted by his enemies; according to Siouxsie Sexcrime, the drug has unleashed his hidden, true self, "a ravening beast with fangs and claws." As things progress, it becomes clear that exposure to Alethex really is altering Max’s personality, and not for the better—making him, for instance, increasingly offhand about sexual cruelty and committed to exploring and using the domination of women as a tool—but he is far from being entirely converted into a creature of Siouxsie. Having privately rechristend himself as "Max Power," he’s dedicated to turning Operation: Foxx Hunt to his own ends, and to thwarting a far more terrible scheme that he’s sensed in the background.

5’0" 34D-22-36 (or 36DD-22-36 when "enhanced" – 38DD-22-36 after second enhancement), short black hair, age 19

Abilities: A knife-fighter second to none, she once killed a Boryokudan (yakuza) boss with a thirty-yard throw.

Description: The Goth/alt-cutie representative among the Foxxes, Raven McCoy supposedly looks so much like a younger version of Diablo Cody that there’s a running joke in the media about the two never being seen together in the same place. (This resemblance is probably overrated, knowing the press, but they have the same basic type of winsome beauty.) Raven’s devastating feminine curves, though, are more reminiscent of someone like Melyssa Ford.

Personality & Background: Raven’s family hails from the Commonwealth of Jefferson and are descendants of the McCoy clan of the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud. She acquired her skills as a knife fighter while being raised as a carnie in the Jack Rhodes Travelling Circus. When the circus fell on hard times, her parents sold her to the Blaze Kings biker gang, a betrayal so deep that she has mentally disowned them completely. This betrayal may be why, out of all the Foxxes, Raven’s secret fixation on Max Fawkes is by far the most intense. What could fairly be called her obsession with Max is advanced enough to have crowded other men out of her life even as fantasy figures; she is the only one of the Foxxes to successfully catch a glimpse of him, and she was masturbating to her own hastily-snapped photos of him before the events of Operation: Foxx Hunt took place.

Raven is an effective fighter – almost as ruthless as Keiko when need be – a stunningly precocious spy, and a valued member of the Five. However, she suffers from a lower self-esteem than she lets on, along with profound insecurities about her comparative youth, about her public profile (she frets that the other team members have cool nicknames while she doesn’t), about whether her skills are really all that necessary to the team, and most especially about whether Max will eventually find her wanting compared to the other Foxxes and abandon her to the wolves as her parents did.

Despite these issues, Raven keeps up a positive outlook. She has taken a leading role as an inspiration for teen girls threatened by the vice industry, and the formation of the Kitts was her idea.

Abilities: An experienced FBI man who did much of the legwork in putting Operation Freedom in place.

Description: A thin and rather seedy-looking Caucasian man in his forties sporting an awful combover. He’s masquerading as the world’s worst, most skeevily misogynistic hairdresser at the time of Operation: Foxx Hunt, but one thing his cover identity has in common with his true personality is an obsession with disco; he dresses like a man beamed forward in time from the set of Saturday Night Fever.

Personality & Background: Johnny Mosley has been in the game a long time and came to Operation: Foxx Hunt due to his friendship with Max Fawkes. He helped build the Foxxes’ Den facility and has been the Foxxes’ close companion and the heart of their support network from the beginning. For all his very real eccentricities, he’s a soberly dedicated agent and a deeply patriotic man who loves an all-American hot dog and a view of the Three Angels of Island City almost as much as he loves a good Jive, Inc. record.

At the time of Operation: Foxx Hunt, Mosley is Operation Freedom’s second-in-command, directly responsible for managing the dozens of Agents living and working in the Den, for supervising the Kitts, for supporting the Foxes and for running a formidable informant network. While he isn’t entirely free of sexual fantasies about the gorgeous women and girls with whom he works, he genuinely cares about and would lay down his life for all of them.

After his first encounter with Alethex changes him and forces his flight from Operation Freedom, he later takes refuge with some of the remaining members of his street informant network and resurfaces as the slick domino-masked Disco criminal El Terrifico, who has a bone to pick with a certain Sabrina Lockhart.

5’1" 38DD-24-38 (or 42DDD-24-38 when enhanced), pale blonde, age 24

Abilities: Eidetic memory, keen intuition and expert marksmanship (she once parted a man’s hair with a bullet, a memory of which she’s quite fond).

Description: A Nordic-looking blonde, she’s compared at one point to an image in a Frank Frazetta painting, and visually speaking is partly inspired by (for those who remember this) the naked, stacked blonde who is brought onstage in the prison theatre to "test" Alex after he’s been "cured" in A Clockwork Orange. Her facial features would be comparable to someone like Anna Kournikova for finely-chiseled beauty (the resemblance of her real name to Kournikova’s is not coincidental). She has a distinctive, slightly husky voice.

Personality & Background: "Summerset O’Neale" is an assumed name; she started life as Anastasia Kurylenko. She fell afoul of the Russian mob at the age of twenty while emigrating to the United States to take a "waitress" job, but was fortunate enough to be rescued before the worst could befall her.

She idolizes Max Fawkes for helping her discover her true potential and giving her an opportunity to fight vice and slave trading. It was Max who helped her discover her extraordinary intuitive gifts – her talent for sensing when something feels wrong – and outside of her eidetic memory, in all the world she trusts two other things above all else, her own intuition and Max Fawkes, not necessarily in that order. (The side-effect of this is that when she finds herself doubting Max, she also finds herself doubting her own intuition.)

Though not entirely without a sense of humour, Summerset – or "Summer" to her friends – is serious-minded and conscientious about her leadership role in the Foxx Force Five. She’s resourceful, courageous and resilient and cares deeply about her teammates. Capable of being flirtatious when in the right sort of mood – or when her job demands it – she’s nevertheless actually quite shy about sex, and not particularly experienced.

5’2" 32B-24-36 (34C-24-36 as "Siobhan O’Connor"), dark brown hair (or dark auburn hair as "Siobhan"), age 18

Abilities: She was the closest of the Kitts to finishing her training before the events of Operation: Foxx Hunt, and is a proficient marksman and martial artist.

Description: Bailey is a tanned, winsome "hoochie-girl" kind of girl with a curvy ass to die for, in a league with Raven McCoy and Summerset O’Neale or even Satin Rayne. After her first mission, she returns with a saucily confident stride and a twinkle in her eye... but will anyone realize in time that it’s a twinkle of madness?

Personality & Background: The Kitts, like the Foxxes before them, were selected partly because of their natural abilities, and partly because they were all strongly motivated by having had their own close encounters with Island City’s burgeoning underworld of vice and white slavery. Though we don’t know the details, we do know that Bailey had her close call when she snuck into a bar at the age of sixteen.

The experience didn’t spoil her innocence or good nature, though, and when we first encounter her, Bailey is an excited and anything-but-typical teenager apprehensively preparing for her first mission for Operation Freedom. She’s inexperienced but eager to do a good job, and convinced both that she’s ready after having been trained by greats like Satin Rayne and Keiko Takeda, and that Operation Freedom will protect her if anything should happen.

After being caught and broken by the Syndicate, Bailey is transformed, and lives thereafter in a state of tormented madness and driven by an obsessive quest for vengeance against the Operation Freedom agents who seemingly abandoned her to her fate. Ironically, her utter devotion to her new Mistress allows her to pass off her mania as a saucy new confidence that fools even the most carefully observant of the people around her, and gives her precisely the effectiveness as an operative that she hadn’t yet achieved while still a Kitt. Bailey is now one of the Syndicate’s major weapons inside the Foxxes’ Den.

Satin Rayne (a.k.a. The Black Bombshell):

5’5" 34D-22-40, (38DD-22-40 enhanced), dark brown hair with light brown highlights, age 21

Abilities: World-class demolitions expert, and no slouch with an assault rifle.

Description: She has light coffee-coloured skin, green eyes and pouty, kissable lips, and in the symmetrical perfection of her features is often compared to Beyonce... though she claims to think of herself as prettier. (In all honesty, she’s in some ways a physical surrogate for the enormous number of brown-skinned beauties that I fall in love with on a daily basis, and my mental image of her is always slightly in flux as a result. Maybe she has a face more like Angel Melaku, or Noemie Lenoir? Totally possible.)

Personality & Background: Like all the Foxxes, Satin had a close brush with the darker forces of vice before she became an agent of Operation Freedom. Though the precise nature of her incident has yet to be revealed, we do know it took place in Newkirk, involving a basement and shackles and the horrible sound of a fellow-captive being raped by a dog right next to her – plainly enough to beget a very acute fear of being tied or restrained in any way.

At root, Satin is a gentle, nurturing and compassionate person. She frankly enjoys her body and her beauty, likes men and is far from sexually shy, but she’s emotionally vulnerable and a bit "girly" – a fact about which she’s keenly insecure, and for which she tends to overcompensate by cultivating an image of extraordinarily brash confidence. Her fantasies about becoming Max Fawkes’ paramour, and her fear that the other Foxxes might out-compete her for this honour, are almost certainly rooted in a deep-seated need for emotional security.

Nevertheless, she genuinely loves her fellow Foxxes and is particularly close friends with Summerset, with whom she has been an occasional lover. She’s the unofficial second-in-command of the Foxx Force Five.

5’8" 34B-24-36 (38DD-24-36 enhanced), black hair, age 24

Abilities: One of the world’s top hand-to-hand fighters, a preternatural talent with devastating expertise in kung fu, judo, jiujitsu and capoeira.

Description: A flawless Eurasian beauty with freckled skin, almond-shaped eyes and a long, shining, silky mane. The description will probably call Lucy Liu to mind for many, though I actually envisage her as looking more like a sort of cross between Zhang Ziyi and Evangeline Lilly... but, you know, whatever.

Personality & Background: Keiko is justifiably proud of her skills as a fighter, and in normal circumstances has nerves of steel when in a combat situation. Where necessary, she is utterly unflinching about brutality and even killing when it comes to the criminal element. That’s partly because she knows full well they’d be equally unflinching given the opportunity, and partly because she gets a genuine thrill out of ripping apart opponents twice and three times her size. Outside of this, though, she’s very friendly and approachable and has a particular fondness for family-friendly card games like pinochle and Go Fish.

We don’t yet know the precise nature of Keiko’s first brush with the netherworld of vice and the slave trade, but it happened in Tokyo at the same time as Mylene Desanges’ and not long before becoming a Foxx... which means that either she was training in the martial arts already or that she acquired her skills with astonishing speed. She has an almost neurotic fixation on the Japanese half of her heritage; she’s deeply proud of having been adopted as a kind of mascot – "The Tiger Princess" – by the Japanese media and her everyday speech often sounds like she’s reading dialogue from a samurai B-movie, though this tends to drop away in moments of stress. Not coincidentally, she has some profound and unresolved "daddy issues" as regards her long-dead Japanese father (though at the risk of spoilers, the events that befall her in Operation: Foxx Hunt should definitely not be interpreted to mean that her father actually abused her).

Of all her fellow Foxxes, she’s probably closest with Raven McCoy, perhaps because of their shared interest in the martial arts.

The Ministry of State Security: Behind the puzzling international reach of the Red Queen Syndicate’s operations and the scale and sophistication of its countersurveillance and digital espionage resources, there is China’s secret service, the MSS, the Syndicate’s clandestine benefactor. The MSS has been tempted into operating in Island City by the promise of a great prize from Siouxsie Sexcrime, a prize apparently great enough even to run the risk of touching off a nuclear confrontation with America.

Abilities: An experienced and brilliant analyst and spy.

Description: An unremarkable-looking Chinese businessman type with a seamed, leathery face, Qin Zhang nevertheless projects an air of chillingly casual brutality, and is perhaps one of the few people anywhere who can compete with Siouxsie Sexcrime for sheer creepiness.

Personality & Background: Qin Zhang is cautious, methodical, deeply dedicated to his work for Mother China and ruthless in pursuit of his goals; he respects and admires the same kind of ruthlessness in others. He operates a large network of MSS operatives and cyber-spies and is directly guarded and assisted by a trio of his own beautiful female agents, codenamed Agent 17, Agent 22 and Agent 54. (Their "real" names are "Symbol," "Apple" and "Elect Kitty" respectively, all Chinglish names derived from the English classes they took in mainland China.)

The Red Queen Syndicate: Outside criminal circles, the Red Queen Syndicate is still an obscure and rarely-glimpsed organization; even most of those observers who do know of its existence have yet to grasp its true importance. Aside from running an international network of brothels, it supposedly works to carry out special tasks for the Mafia Commission of Island City (and particularly for the Commission’s ruling Family, the Rubinettos). Secretly, it has another, even more sinister purpose, as yet guessed by almost no-one...

Abilities: Beam is supposedly good in a fight, though we’ve yet to see this put to the test. He’s one of the most experienced and highly-placed of the Cleanhead enforcers, and despite thinking of himself as no genius, he’s smarter than most people give him credit for.

Description: Like all the Cleanheads, Jimmy is something of a human tank physically, big, muscular and shaven-haired. He’s brown-skinned and of thus far indeterminate heritage, possibly Latino (he’s partial to Mexican food).

Personality & Background: Jimmy Beam, like almost all of the Cleanheads, didn’t start life in the criminal class at all; he was a college athlete on dwindling Financial Aid who was lured into working for the Syndicate – replacing his predecessors, the far more brutal Dominican gang called Los Cabezas-Brillantes – by the promise of fast money and an outlaw lifestyle. Most of the Cleanheads are kept in line by the fact that Siouxsie and her Mafia allies have leverage over their families, and presumably this applies to Beam as well.

Prior to Operation: Foxx Hunt, Jimmy is one of the few Cleanheads to encounter a Foxx directly; this encounter, with Mylene Desanges, leads to him being distracted and relieved of important information that makes possible the bust of Russian gangster Vladimir Popov. From the outset, Jimmy is clearly governed by fear of his Boss and has a contradictory attitude toward the Foxxes of mixed hatred and admiration.

Despite his thuggishness, Jimmy eventually turns out to suffer from some degree of conscience – which he at first mistakes for indigestion – and also to suspect that Siouxsie is planning to dispose of the Cleanheads as completely as she disposed of their Dominican predecessors.

Abilities: Not just a master of disguise, but the master of disguise.

Description: Oddly enough, once he shaves his beard and lets his tan fade a bit, Caliente looks decidedly similar to Max Fawkes – which is to say, rather anonymous and unremarkable.

Personality & Background: Gustavo Caliente once worked for the Castro regime, an experience he doesn’t look back on with any great fondness. Since leaving them he has worked with a variety of other dictators and shady characters, always attracted to the work by the money and the thrill of successfully pulling off a great impersonation.

His extended impersonation of Max Fawkes is the most ambitious assignment he’s ever accepted, and in the course of studying for the role he learns a hearty respect for the man.

Though mercenary, Caliente isn’t entirely without conscience and from the day of Max’s capture he finds himself both horrified by and deeply suspicious of his new employers; he is particularly haunted by having recruited the services of a just-barely-eighteen year old girl who winds up being brutally ravished and shipped to an offshore brothel. Eventually, Caliente begins to suspect that "The Boss" is genuinely deranged and capable of turning against him at any time, and finds himself searching for a way out of a contract that increasingly feels like a death trap.

Abilities: A computer wizard of astonishing capabilities, he is the lynchpin of the large-scale digital espionage that makes Operation: Foxx Hunt possible.

Description: Physically repellent, with pocked, sallow skin, wall eyes, rotten brown and yellow teeth, greasy dandruff-ridden hair... et cetera. Seemingly indifferent to personal hygiene, he stinks to high heaven in the enclosed spaces where one normally finds him. His age is unknown but he’s unlikely to be much past thirty.

Personality & Background: The Goblin is presumably an orphan or from a broken home, as his memories of childhood consist of bouncing around in foster care until he was discovered by Cornelius van Rooyen III, who nurtured his talents, long before the existence of the Syndicate or before either of them had met Siouxsie Sexcrime. He claims to have helped van Rooyen program the NOSE (see below).

The Goblin’s energy and singleminded devotion to his digital sabotage work is undeniable, deriving from the fact that he’s profoundly intellectually vain and enjoys demonstrating the awesome skills for which he feels he doesn’t get enough appreciation. Perhaps because he associates the thrill of challenging his intellect and demonstrating his superior talents with having won his way out of foster-care limbo, it’s now a thrill he seeks in a way that’s dissociated from any particular goal or loyalty to any particular person (though he still thinks of showing van Rooyen his work as the logical end point).

For all his technical brilliance, the Goblin is naive, easily led, and almost totally lacking in social savvy or indeed social graces of any kind. He is also, perhaps, more in need of human contact than he’s willing to admit. His interests beyond his work are probably not numerous, but we do know he’s a Tolkien fan: he adopted his moniker because of his opinion that orcs and goblins are underrated technological innovators on Middle-Earth.

5’6", 34B-25-35, sandy brown hair, age thirty...something

Abilities: A classic dominatrix, the Mistress appears to specialize in capturing and breaking girls for the Syndicate – a stable of conquests she calls her Pony Girls – and using them for various duties, be it experimenting on them with designer drugs, keeping relations smooth with other criminal gangs or running profitable sex shows on the organization’s behalf all around Island City.

Description: A trim-bodied knockout with a face reminiscent of a fine-featured beauty like Bar Refaeli, sporting long, sandy hair and equally at home in a business suit or in PVC dominatrix gear. She can shift modes between affable, comforting and terrifying like flicking a switch, and pull all of them off with equal aplomb.

Personality & Background: Sabrina Lockhart’s main base of operations is her eponymous Sex Research Centre in Havenbrook, Island City. She masquerades there as the head of a research clinic, but despite her impressive wall of degrees and honours, it’s doubtful whether she has a scientific background. Her main duties seem to be the management of the Syndicate’s ever-rotating roster of teenaged sex slaves.

Lockhart doesn’t flinch one whit from the sadism, brutality and occasional murders that her duties involve: a lack of compunction that has earned her a high position in the Syndicate hierarchy. On the other hand, while she enjoys her work, she sometimes seems paradoxically less obsessed with the sadism than her boss, Siouxsie Sexcrime. It’s ultimately a job for her, and she’s a businesswoman who’s plainly working in the expectation of a very, very large payday when all is said and done.

She has a healthy respect for the risks the Syndicate is running in Operation: Foxx Hunt – risks that, privately, cause her no end of stress – and an equally healthy fear of Siouxsie. When it looks like any of the Syndicate’s personnel are getting sloppy or overconfident, she’ll often get the call from their fellow criminals to come in and straighten them out in no uncertain terms before The Boss gets involved and people’s families start disappearing.

Abilities: A top-flight neurologist and the designer of the highly advanced Neural Oscillation Synchronic Emulator – the so-called NOSE which gives him his "Hound" nickname – which can translate neural data into graphic images and allow the user to manipulate and direct the subconscious of a subject.

Description: Bald, stocky and muscular with a handsome face, a salt-and-pepper goatee, a charming manner and a winning smile. Very good at putting others at their ease.

Personality & Background: The Hound seems to function thus far as a kind of subliminal torturer and interrogator for the Red Queen Syndicate. He’s proud of his invention and prone to buffing down the gleaming device like an obsessive car owner with a classic Cadillac. He also has a tendency to obsess neurotically about cases where it hasn’t seemed to deliver the results it should... but those are few and far between. He is amiably sadistic in his approach to his job – savoring as "better than sex" the sensation of power he derives from invading, breaking and remolding the minds of his subjects – but also, in his own way, capable of recognizing and honouring courage and resilience in a foe.

Despite his impressive achievements, he isn’t famous as a medical practitioner, probably indicating that he was somehow disgraced in the past. His name might seem to indicate membership in a prominent New Amsterdam family. He claims to have helped Siouxsie Sexcrime to found the Red Queen Syndicate.

[The name "Siouxsie Sexcrime" also appears, by the way, as a throwaway reference in the Paul di Filippo novel Ribofunk.]

6’0", 34B-24-36, platinum blonde, age unknown but probably not over 30

Abilities: A brilliant, ruthless schemer and almost certainly the primary chemist behind the kaleidoscope of designer drugs for which her Red Queen Syndicate becomes infamous.

Description: A lithe, sultry and elegant woman with pouty lips, possessed of an icy Scandinavian beauty and with remarkably cold gray eyes. Her voice is a mellow, throaty contralto. She is always well-dressed and smokes large Dominican cigars.

Personality & Background: Siouxsie’s past is something of a mystery; indeed, even the connection of her name to her various other aliases as a crime boss was opaque to Operation Freedom’s investigators after years of intensive work. Her primary headquarters is at the Sands Estate outside of Island City, but the nature of her connection to the Sands Family that once owned that estate is not known. She probably has some personal or family connection to the Dominican Republic – aside from her partiality to Dominican tobacco, her organization also runs brothels there and the first gang to work for her in Island City were the Dominican Cabezas-Brillantes – but the nature of that connection is not known.

She certainly wasn’t born with the name "Siouxsie Sexcrime," but claims now to view that name as her true identity, and is disinterested in talking about what preceded it. If what she says can be believed, she embarked on her career as a crime boss at least five years before the events of Operation: Foxx Hunt; her activities began to have a noticeable impact on the city two years after that. She claims to have been the first test subject for the drug Alethex, and contends that the drug liberated her from an inauthentic "moral" life she had previously led.

Siouxsie is untrustworthy, however, and all of her claims about her past, her identity and her attitudes toward it may well be half-truths or outright lies.

Though she’s capable of pouring on a kind of winning, glamorous charm when she wants to, most people who encounter Siouxsie have the unmistakable impression of being in the presence of something creepy, inhuman and dangerous. Her minions live in fear of her—a habit she likes to encourage—and of what she’s capable of doing to them or especially to their families if crossed. She is mercurial, nigh-inscrutable and seems to have a bottomless appetite for cruelty, especially sexual cruelty and especially directed at young women. Yet, despite her chosen monniker and M.O., it’s obvious that she does not "get off" on these cruelties in any physical way; her interest in them is strangely clinical and asexual.

Gemma Bond (a.k.a. The Golden Vixxen) (tiny-titted, sandy-haired runway model)

Irina Dubrovna (a.k.a. The White Vixxen) (voluptuous blonde)

Lizzie Maxwell (a.k.a. The Red Vixxen) (red-haired Goth cutie)

Katie Staite (a.k.a. The Silver Vixxen) (brunette hoochie girl)

Selena Jolie (a.k.a. "Mysteria, Super-Sleuth of Newvale City") (Latina cutie)

Janie Price (a.k.a. "The Midnight Cowgirl, Buffalo Soldierette and Fastest Fist in the West") (voluptuous but athletic mahogany-skinned cutie with bleached blonde hair)

"Miss Adventure, Lady of the Lost, Protector of Phoenix City" (real name unknown) (full-breasted Bettie Page brunette)

"Devilette, The Damsel of Daring" (real name unknown) (big-titted strawberry blonde)

Agent Lonnie James

Agent Mike Shane (Lonnie’s partner)

Agent Janet Makepeace (chief medic in the Foxxes’ Den and "proprietor" of Miriam’s Shawarma)

Agent Larry McWhirter (a Utah Mormon)

Agent Dickson

Agent "Chris" (a young technician working in the Den’s inner sanctum)

Ahmed

Bill

Bobby

Cache

Chris

Cody

Grayson (a.k.a. "Doctor Shibari")

Gerald (Sabrina Lockhart’s assistant)

Jerry

Ramos

Tommy

...and many, many others (about two hundred in all)

Annie

Chloe & Zoe (twin blondes)

Phaedra

...and many more, often with "generic stripper names"

Warden Jed "Double J" Jackson

Head Guard Karl Jablonsky

Officer Deena Ryder

Nurse Jadette

Queen Bea & Princess (inmates)

Andy & Randy (guards)

Crips:

Big T (Deena Ryder’s pimp and proprietor of the Uniformly Hot Talent Agency)

Alexis (the girl who facilitates Max Fawkes’ capture)

Mercedes Sheraton (a hot, blonde and spoiled hotel heiress)

Susan Ashe (a.k.a. Fantastica, the Single Girl’s Champion)

Faye Santini (a.k.a. "Deep Throat") (a friend of Fantastica)

Connie Phillips (hot redheaded reporter for the Island City Star)

The Foxxx Force Five: (a group of unfortunate oil-wrestlers who run afoul of Siouxsie)

Kandi (a.k.a. "Summerset") (skinny, trashy peroxide-blonde stripper with big fake tits)

Gene (a.k.a. "Keiko") (petite busty surfer-tanned Korean)

Jani (a.k.a. "Mylene") (petite and tiny-titted eighteen-year-old)

Maria (a.k.a. "Satin") (sweet-faced Latina nineteen-year-old)

Kendra (a.k.a. "Raven") (look most like the real Foxx but a bit taller and bustier)

Boss Angel Rubinetto (a.k.a. "The King of Island City")

Sonny Rubinetto, chief street capo of Midtown

Fingers Costello, a key member of Sonny’s crew

Thys van Rooyen, CEO and presumed to be a relative of the Hound

Kroeger, an Afrikaner ERIS agent

Harel, an Israeli ERIS agent

Sister Lilith Crowley (a.k.a. "Sister Mary Jane")

Sister Lilith D’Aquino (a.k.a. Alexandra DeWitt, "Sister Mary Gabriel")

Sister Lilith Ryouko

Sister Lilith Minx (a.k.a. "Sister Mary Blige")

Sister Lilith Anya & Sister Lilith Katya

Sister Lilith Diabla

Sister Lilith DeVille (a.k.a. Emmanuelle Venturi) & Sister Lilith Telfer (a.k.a Brigitte Venturi)

... and others

King Sun

Sun Dogg (and crew)

Li’l Snake (pimp)

All criminals who are out of action, frequently due to the efforts of Operation Freedom, before the events of Operation: Foxx Hunt begin.

At least one Boryokudan (yakuza) group

The 12K Triad

The DeWitt Gang (Irish mobsters, including Dermott [fate unknown], Gabriel [in prison] and Joey [dead] DeWitt)

Los Cabezas-Brillantes (brutal Dominican gang, the precusors to the Syndicate’s "Cleanheads")

The Midnight Bomber (fate and current whereabouts unknown)

The Venturi Clan (Corsican mobsters, including Jacques Venturi)

Unidentified illegal sex club in the Saranacs Park Preserve

Vladimir Popov and crew (Vory v zakone, Russian mafia)

The Foxx Force Five adventures take place in a fictionalized version of America. All of the places listed below have either already appeared or will be making an appearance in the stories; without exception they’re direct analogues to actual places, slightly tweaked and given alternate names. Real place names pop up, too: Hollywood, Utah, and Washington, D.C. all appear as themselves.

The State of Cimarron: Kansas.

Emerald City: Not Seattle, obviously. An analogue of the other Emerald City, Wichita.

The Commonwealth of Gloriana: Virginia.

The State of West Gloriana: West Virginia.

The Commonwealth of Jefferson: Kentucky.

The State of Joliet: Analogue to the State of Illinois.

Phoenix City: Confusingly, not Phoenix, Arizona; this is actually an analogue of Chicago. In the Foxx universe the city’s original name was Dearborn (after Fort Dearborn) but it was officially renamed due to its "rising from the ashes" after the Great Fire of 1871.

The State of New Amsterdam: Analogue to the State of New York. Also called The Vanguard State.

Saranacs Park Preserve: Cottage country in upstate New Amsterdam.

Casanovia: A village in the Saranacs Park Preserve.

Fort West: A county outside of Island City. Home to the Fort West Women’s Correctional Facility and the Shari Choe Reservoir.

Island City: An obvious analogue of New York City. Its boroughs and major landmarks include:

Angel Island: Liberty Island.

The Three Angels – colossal statues of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality as winged seraphim, the "Three Angels of the [American] Revolution" – are an analogue to the Statue of Liberty.

Hague Island: Statten Island.

The Bel Air apartment block on Hague Island was the headquarters of the 37^th Black Sun Nation, Island City’s largest Blood gang.

Havenbrook: Queens.

The Sabrina Lockhart Sex Research Centre is in Havenbrook. So is Max Fawkes’ house and Sidon Hospital.

Heartland Park is an analogue of Central Park, containing such landmarks as Cardinal Bridge, The Tarn, The Spitzer Fountain and General Flagg Plaza.

Kingsway: Brooklyn.

The Kingsway Bridge is a version of the Brooklyn Bridge. The Atlantic Heights neighbourhood – where the Kingpins (a Blood gang) operated – is in Kingsway.

Majestic Midway Station is Grand Central Terminal.

Midtown: Manhattan.

Midtown has a Chinatown.

Devil’s Banquet is obviously an analogue of Hell’s Kitchen. Bolero’s, an Argentinian family restaurant and Syndicate front business, is situated here.

Fairfield is an analogue of Greenwich Village.

Little Sicily is an analogue for Little Italy.

There is a Little Korea neighbourhood, and a neighbourhood called Soliko (SOuth of LIttle KOrea) in reference to it, hence the Soliko Grand Hotel.

Middleburg is an analogue of Manhattan’s Midtown. The Foxxes’ Den, the elaborate underground headquarters of Operation Freedom in the Operation: Foxx Hunt stories – accessed through the disreputable SUDDZ hair salon at street level, or its companion dummy businesses such as Miriam’s Shawarma – is in East Middleburg. So is the Connemara Girls’ Prep School just off Green Boulevard (Park Avenue).

Newkirk is an analogue of Harlem. Sunny Boulevard in Newkirk is an analogue of Pleasant Avenue.

Mohegan River: The Hudson River.

Morgan Street is Wall Street, home of the venerable Island City Stock Exchange.

The Morners: The Bronx.

Jimmy Beam’s favourite Mexican restaurant, El Rey’s, is in the Morners.

Olympia Square is an analogue of Times Square.

Pommanock Island: Long Island. (Ergo, "Long Island iced tea" is "Pommanock punch.")

The Vanguard State Building is an analogue of the Empire State Building.

West River: The East River. (Clever, eh what?!) It’s in the same sort of position geographically speaking, it was just named from a different vantage point.

The State of Newvale: Analogue to the State of New Jersey.

Newvale City: Jersey City.

The State of Shennessee: Analogue to Texas.

Magnolia: Houston.