Born the only child of a native Brazilian mother and a Japanese tourist who left before she was born, growing up in a Southern Brazilian Favela, Pão’s life was not destined to be easy. The area she lived in was referred to by the locals as ‘Twelfth Street’; one number away from unlucky thirteen, only one step removed from death. When she was seven years old, Pão’s mother became bedridden from untreated illnesses, and Pão was forced to enter the workforce in any way she could. Pretending to both be a boy and older than she truly was, aided in both areas by her remarkably large frame, she took work from any source with few enough scruples to hire her. After a few years of bouncing around, the hard work stiffening her attitude and resolve, she became regular a regular worker for a construction company. Though the pay was far from luxurious, it offered her a chance to see the world beyond the slums, working on-site in more economically developed regions of Brazil. Though this world on the surface seemed so far away from Pão’s own that it was overwhelming, a certain throughline connected the two:


Corruption.

While working on-site, Pão began to take notice of a particular officer of the law, who would regularly push around locals, shake down shop owners for money, and use his power to pressure and exploit citizens around him. She knew others saw these things, and she also knew that those others found them equally disgusting, including other members of law enforcement, but due to the officer’s high position, nothing was ever done. Eventually, she even began to stay on-site well into the night to observe him, her soul burning with a deep but impotent rage, both at him and at herself for being unable to do anything.

At age 14, Pão was once again staying late at a construction site on the outskirts of the developed town. In the dead of night, she witnessed the officer take out his gun, and shoot a woman through the heart who was resisting his advances. As she saw him, he saw her, too. Pão went home with a deep fear in her heart; of course, she had resigned herself at that point that nothing she could do could take down this man in power, and she had no intentions of speaking out about what she saw. The officer, though, thought it better to be safe, rather than sorry. He accused Pão of the murder, used his connections to avoid it going to trial, and exploited Pão’s lies about her own age to have her tried as an adult. At age 14, Pão de Queijo was sentenced to life in a prison.

This event solidified the philosophy that had been growing in her mind for years; with Power, the ability to exact your will over others, a person could do whatever they wanted. Without Power, no ideals, wishes, or passion would ever be enough to stop them. With that in mind, and with the officer who destroyed her life pulling strings to get her placed in solitary, she began to forge her burning rage with laser-focus, dedicating herself to training her body and focusing her will. She would obtain the Power she needed.

After serving three years of her sentence, the time had come to put the results of that dedication to use. In her work, Pão developed a Stand and slowly learned how to control it. Using it to rip the door to her solitary cell off of its hinges, she walked through the prison and out the front door. Many guards knew of both her age and her innocence, and were hesitant to fire on her. Even those that did not have this knowledge or care found themselves unable to lift their guns at her. In reality, they were all being weighed down by the effects of her Stand, but every guard and prisoner she passed on her way out the front door said the same thing after the fact; it was as though they were completely paralyzed with fear. No party was ever sent to go after her.

Once she escaped, she learned that her mother had succumbed to a combination of illness and grief in the years after her imprisonment. She had known it would be the case, but seeing the shallow, untended grave filled her with even deeper anger. That night, only a few nights after she made her escape, she waited at the building she had once worked at, now complete, and saw the man who had ruined her. He saw her, too, but didn’t recognize her.

In the morning, his body was found, so mangled and crushed that the coroners believed that he was run over by a truck.

Pão had no intentions or ideas of what to do after that, but as she attempted to lay low, word began to spread about her. Soon, to her side, people began to flock; misunderstood punks who looked up to her, people who were affected by the corrupt police force and wanted to help her, even ex-officers who had been forcefully resigned after futility attempting to put an end to the corruption; soon, at her side, Pão had assembled a full-sized gang of outcasts and rebels, and bolstered by their leader’s almost mythical reputation with law enforcement, grew practically untouched in the slums that Pão, once as a child and now grown up, called home. They named themselves the Twelfth Street Gang, under their leader, Pão de Queijo.