Fireworks

I'm back in D.C. and not a moment to soon, I got back in town yesterday just in time to see the fireworks.
There's a hill I like to go up to every year, nothing special about this hill most of the year, but I can see a good portion of the town, and watch all the fireworks going off. It really takes my breathe away, everyone in town making on massive city wide fireworks show.

It also helps I PTSD like a motherfucker in town on the 4th, do you guys have any idea how much a fireworks show sounds like heavy combat?

.....

Anyways, yeah, so I was expecting at best, to be severely chewed out, striped of privileges and given a nice desk to sit at for the rest of my working career for how  blatantly terrible things went in Washington... Instead I was given a pat on the back, told what a great job we did out there, and to put our losses behind us. In there eyes, we brought down an Omega level threat, that also destroyed an artifact of the Abomination, and took out a blogger in the process.

Mission fucking complete in there eyes.

Anyways, I'm already back on assignment, there was a series of really grisly murders here in DC that needed investigated, I was confused by this mostly because we normally *Cause* those grisly murders. Turns out most of those killed however were agents of our Organization. Seems like someone has decided that we've all lived long enough.

Now I get to find how who its butchering our men, and kill them.

Should be a nice change of pace, and I can work from home.

Oh... one more thing, there won't be an after action report for Washington, it's been deemed classified. so I'm not allowed to post an after action report in this case, of course there's nothing stopping you from reading a detailed retelling of the end of the operation here.

Lot of empty seats at the table tonight

This isn't an official after action report, my official report has not been filed yet so I can't post a declassified acct of the end of  "Operation: Washington" for a few days.

We officially went into this mission with around 35 operatives, of those only two of us are left, Reaver, who I asked to stay behind to report if we didn't make it, and myself, who was the sole survivor of our task force to take down the Proxy known as Antonio....

So many deaths... I knew them all...

I'm used to seeing people die, I saw allot friends die during the war, but this is not the war.... It's apparent to me now that we were over our heads from the get-go, we really were outclassed here...

For this, I expect heads to roll, I lead the team, and I walked away from it alive, I'm at best looking at reassignment, at worse imprisonment for leading so many good men to there deaths...

The cleaning team already disposed of the remains... both my Rival's, and my team's....

To say this is a great night to start drinking again, well that's putting it mildly, Reaver is also helping file the bereavement reports, also known as letters to mothers. "Dear miss such and such" and all the "He died bravely for his country" lines you see in war movies....

You know, at least when it came to my former Army life, at least I could talk to someone about it, I mean, I had friends at home, parents to talk to when I got back, shit like that.

In the Organization, all my official reports are sealed, I'm not allowed to talk to anyone about my experiences, not to family, not to friends...

Fuck I'm not even using my real name on here. I swear there were other "Vergil's" before me.

I didn't even know there real names.

Anyways the Booze is hitting so I'm going to shelf the last of the reports for the morning, and hit my bunk, I'll post and after action report later on tomorrow... or whenever the fuck I can.

Operation Washington: Update 5: Collusion

I was litterly a half foot out of the door to go raid the Rival's stronghold when Reaver's cell when off to let us know the Outsider had changed his mind and accepted our offer....

I'm almost disappointed because I was very much wondering effect would an Armsel Protecta Bulldog, also known as the non-knock off version of the "Street sweeper" 12 gauge automatic shotgun, would have done to a telekinetic enhanced proxy, who was further empowered with an artifact of immense power...

I'm guessing, not a whole hell of allot....

Well in any-rate I spent the last several days in tense negotiations with the Outsider, in between his training to use what ever power he's gaining, as he gets sicker and sicker...

The plan is, to strike, with maybe a one day window to take down  the Rival, with the help out of what we all believe is going to be a supercharged Outsider, who will be at that point, almost on the verge of whatever is going to pass for death for him.

It really is a god damn shame really, the Outsider represents potential for a greater humanity, not bound by a world dominated in the shadows by the Abomination. That is of course if he wasn't such an asshole. If any one reading this put two and two together to know who I'm talking about yeah, he's actually a bit more of a dick in person than in his comments.

The Outsider and the Rival, were friends once, they fought with, and against each other, have bleed for each other, and now there going to kill each other... It's a tragic fate to be sure.

My team is breaking out the big guns, beyond the aforementioned Automatic Shotguns, were also breaking out the good stuff, combat armor, Kevlar with strike plates, Mono edge combat knives, Flashbangs, Multi-spectrum optical glasses, Heartbeat monitors, satellite images of the area... I mean shit I wish I was this well outfitted in the Army....

But in all likely hood this is going to be the last dance for a whole lot of us, see, the Outsider is dying faster than we thought, I do believe that tomorrow is when were going to hit the Rival's hideout with everything we have....

Well fuck it, I don't plan on dying, like a bitch, if I need to I got one last secret, a "final solution" for if we fail.... May god have mercy on my soul if I have to use it, and if I somehow survive this? Well there's a girl back in DC I think I'm going to finally work up the nerve to ask out for dinner.

Operation Washington: Update 4: Contact

Today I made contact with the Outsider, we talked at length about the situation, about what his, I'm guessing former proxy friend did to my men, I offered my services in helping taking him down....

The Outsider brushed me off, it seems he's to busy practicing some esoteric Voodoo bullshit with some crazy old man, to want to seek out and kill the son of a bitch.

So I played dirty, I asked him one question.

"So what do you think would of happened if you ran a bit slower back in Pittsburgh? Maybe none of this would have happened?"

We got in a bit of a scuffle, without his weapon he's not much of a fighter, I got him in an arm lock, and took him to his knee pretty easily.

"Well if you think those moves can kill <Redacted> Then i'll just be on my way"

I left him my card... and I went back to camp... Lets see if the fish bites the hook.

Afterwards we took stock of our gear and weapons, if the Outsider doesn't respond in 2 days time, I plan on ordering a full assault on my Rival's encampment.

Operation Washington: Update 3: Fail State

Well this could have gone better, I sent a strike team to assault the Outsider as I had planed. to draw out my Rival, so would could take him down...

And in no uncertain terms, it was a disaster.

the Rival didn't let his guard down at all, he attacked his former partner, the outsider, and managed to secure a powerful artifact of the fucking Abomination.

An artifact he used to attack our base camp, I'm not down about 75% of my team, he ran through our base like a god damn wrathful god, killing anyone who tried to resist him.... the surviving members of my team are now at a secondary fallback point.

I don't have a choice now, we don't have the strength to finish the operation now...

I have to contact the Outsider, and get him on our side. We need to kill my Rival, or he might destroy the whole god damn city.

A certian fondness...

I find myself having to respect the runners who's stories I've been immersing myself with, many of them have had to suffer more deeply, and fight more fiercely than our strongest agents, many of them have suffered trauma worse than the most hardened solders I have fought with.

Which is why it pains me to have to fight them.

My secondary target in this area, is a runner, a rare case, not popular with other bloggers, and is likely going to die friendless in the end, but there's a certain respect there. Or there would be if he wasn't such an asshole.

I find myself, Respecting one blogger in particular, the runner Lucia. She has had a terrible time as of late, her lover is dead, something my secondary target has experienced during his time running. But they both handle it differently.

One represses, and lashes out, damning the world. They only can look at the past, and are unable to look forwards. This one seems to be seeking there own death and are playing with fire and endangering lives.

The other takes the time to accept what has happened, and look forward, and is actively trying to live.to protect what matters.

I can respect that, but that won't change the fact that I might find myself in direct conflict with them, espcially if the situation in Pittsburgh escalates.

About an hour ago, I ordered a kill team to test the might of the secondary target, they have orders to not kill anyone, but if my Rival is monitoring us, like I suspect, this will make him aware of the Secondary target's location...

The results should be interesting. To see if those two play there roles to the letter.

Operation Washington: Update 2: Target Acquired

He's in town, my Rival, and I got to test his strength yesterday.

He was sleeping under an overpass, we had a tail on him for most of the day, I sent a full 8 man kill-team, armed with automatic weapons, Stun-clubs, and a couple of our experimental nano-edged swords.

He wiped the whole team out in 45 seconds. to the last man. Shit I just got done overseeing the cleanup myself, But that's okay, we manages to put a tracker on him, so now I can monster his movements anywhere he goes.

The Analysis Team is going over the data from the battle, so far, it's not good, it looks like my old rival went and rebound himself to the Abomination, and that's bad, even separated from the Abomination he was powerful, he was able to beat me half to death in Pittsburgh, and now he's stronger.

I'm going to need a powerful friend from the outside, Reaver is working on that, he's gathering some usable information on the, well we don't have a classification on the secondary target, so for now. Due to his partially out of phase state, "The Outsider". In the Outsider's state, I have no reason to believe he would work with us in taking down his friend, so he's going to need convincing.

Were calling it a solid plan B. Untill then I'm going to get back to inspecting the damage to a Nano-Sword to see how he was able to block a blade that we have testing on tank armor with some success....

Operation Washington: Update 1

So far so good...

I started up a healthy rumor mill about my Rival's female accomplice... from the Intel I've gathered he's already made it back to Washington and is in the target area.

I already made it on the ground a day before he showed up, and I was able to sight the target from a discreet distance earlier today, also saw his male Accomplice enter the city, and that the secondary target in my operation is already found refuge with some locals in the area...

It'll be interesting to see what will happen when the two of them meet...

It'll be even more interesting to see how they react once they find out that I started the rumor about there mutual friend.

After Action Report #2

Subject in this instance was 15 year old white female, name [Redacted]

Subject was officially filed as a runaway, actual status was that of a Proxy in the area of Chicago. responsible for a series of murders leaving a variant of an operator sign as a calling card, carved into the foreheads of her victims...

The mission was simple, eradicate her.

The target let her guard down quickly when Identified my self as a proxy, performing some tricks for her to "prove myself" Spent an hour helping her dispose of a runner in the area she had been stalking. Subject attempted to seduce me after wards, I played along, much to my personal disgust. I allowed her to lead me to here as she described "Sanctum" where she kept a collection of various cutlery and weapons.

This is where she died, I pulled out a syringe from my coat, and stuck her in the spine with a paralyzing agent, as she lose feeling below the waist, I took the time to carefully set the scene of her demise, I inflicted minor blade injuries, enough all together to lead to a serious bleeding, before interrogating her. I told her that if she named any and all accomplices she may have had in the area, that we would spare her, and I would treat her wounds, I might even help her get a job, so she could take her show on the road.

I played to her attraction of me, and her shockingly poor self estimate, all she wanted, it seemed, was for someone to pay attention to her and care about her, that the killings were to get the Abomination's attention, to give her a more important position in his ranks...

She had no accomplices, she acted alone, I apologized for lying to her, that I was not going to spare her, instead I cradled her and rocked her, made her feel cared about as she passed from blood loss... in the end she thanked me, for showing her affection.

I carved her own sign into her head, it was the last thing I could do for her was to allow her to die, not as a mentally disturbed killer, but as another victim of a murderer that will in effect never be caught....

It was a sad end, of a short wasted life... I took no pride in this mission, had we discovered her sooner we might have been able to De-indoctrinate her from the Abomination's service... sadly this would not be the case.

In this care the cause was just, we barely responded in time, another team carefully dropped information directing the media away from her Abomination influences... a Killing that in the media would have been inspired by "Marble Hornets" would of brought mass attention to the Abomination. It would have ended poorly.

Reasignment: Washington

The organization works in mysterious ways, they actually want me in Washington state... The rumors of my Rival's death finally hit them, so they want me to go to the state he was from, and investigate for signs of him.

The Cyclops is apparently going back that way as well, that's good I wanted to meet the man who turned my Rival against us.

Oh I didn't mention that he used to work for us did I?  What can I say, it didn't come up.. I have a few targets to hit on my way there, I still have to post my second after action report...

There's still no sign of the female accomplice, I plan on using that very, very soon, I got some agents on the ground in Washington already, there going to start up a cute little rumor mill for me, it'll keep the targets, both of them, in one place...

Anyways, In a few hours I'll post the second after action report, it's been filed internally now, so I can feed you the whitewashed version.

Had to rework my cover story today.

Maybe I'll write this up as an action report later, but I learned an important lesson.

 If your going to hack up a body for disposal because the Government wanted you to make another person vanish.. for fucks sake change your clothes before you go to bed..

Failing that, make sure your fully awake before going out to get the paper... seriously the neighbors don't need to ever have to question while your walking out in clothes absolutely spattered in blood....

Seriously....

So I'm now known as Vergil, overnight butcher extraordinaire,  I really think my supervisor was laughing at me for a few hours after that...

Well we can't always be all James Bond in this line of work....

Oh Reaver fed me an update, apparently the man my old rival fell in with has been reported as still having not left the New Mexico coast line... might need to swing by that direction, could be good for a lark.

Discourse 1

A bit of disclosure before I go any further, the organization is pretty specialized, I don't know the full workings, none of us do.

It keeps us honest, so when I don't have an assignment I tend to get allot of downtime, I normally spending it training, or just enjoying and easy day's wage, mostly sitting in my office playing some video game, or filing some low key paperwork...

I get allot of time for personal projects, like following up on rumors that my old rival might still be alive...

I had heard that he had been killed with a blonde female accomplice in Pittsburgh in  a warehouse explosion, in the aid of a blogger that had reportedly fought and killed a Proxy rival of there. I had actually encountered him there, we fought, he got lucky. But an Associate of mine named Reaver suggested that he might had made it out, that there had been sighting's of him in New Mexico near the coastline, which Incidentally a second accomplice, a one eyed man that had been "touched" by the slenderman in an unusual manner had recently been sighted.

My rival however was traveling alone, the Female accomplice was nowhere to be seen at all, likely dead, but I could used that to draw my prey out....

No mater, I've been gathering data on a few of the bloggers a sort of threat assessment, for possible research or containment....

We got a blog by an individual named Lucia, her case is unique as as far as I've been informed she may be the first case where a female had become impregnated by a Proxy, historical documents normally indicate that the results do not end well. it may be the first known life birth. We will be observing his case closely.

Then we come to the case of a British resident by the name of Manic Muse, or currently known as Sane. The subject has an interesting, if dysfunctional relationship with a runner who I will speak of below, but otherwise, it's multiple personality disorder and unreliable narrator makes him an unlikely to be taken seriously source of information, unless this changes I see no need to contain the subject.

The last subject I find my self intrigued by is the case of the blogger Soulpatched, a man who in a short period of time, a rather unrealistic period of time. went from a normal life, to becoming what some would describe as a genuine threat to the Abomination, had he and one of his rumored to be dead associates not had a history with the Organization in a minor level, I might have approached him directly, for now he's not slated for elimination or containment.

That's all for now.

After Action Report #1

Forgive me if I feel once in a while like talking about work... of course I need to leave certain facts intentionally vague, it's for your own protection. Of course my real report is was filed hours ago, and boy there was quite a bit of extra paperwork to file afterwards, as I'm sure you can imagine.

Now I want to correct one thing I said last time, we don't normally execute targets when require with a gun, or bullets, that can be traced, rather we used a expanding gas projected needle made of frozen neuro toxin. we don't need to penetrate deep, just far enough to break the skin and melt into the blood stream to down a target, the toxin is fast neutralizing, normally untraceable in a couple hours.

Of course I could have just lied, I do have an issued .45 caseless hand pistol sitting on my desk.

So anyways, The subject today was a 17 year old male of Korean decent, he had started posting about a close encounter with the Abomination, normally we would chalk him up as a fiction writer and call it good, but he was throwing down ore fact, and less speculation than our normal "slender-blogger" which made him to credible.

We can't have that. Not after the Incident with the late Zeke Strahm. I was dispatched to "Intimidate" or "Eliminate" the target while one of our offsite teams cracked his blog and brought it down. I was knocking on his door about the time he was starting to notice his password stopped working. His father answered the door, I identified myself as being with Homeland Security and that I needed to talk to his son about his internet activities.

The father attempted to attack me, he was an untrained middle aged man half my size, I quickly locked him up and put one needle in him, he was dead before he hit the floor. I then had no choice, I went up stairs, shot the boy,  his brother, his mother, and there dog.

One gas leak and an aerosol can in the microwave later, and we had a convincing, yet tragic house fire.

And his blog with all of his gathered information is gone, purged from the internet. All in a days work of course.

The only problem with having to do this sort of thing, is if he had any serious readership (he didn't) then a killing like that would require secondary eliminations, so we honestly attempt to avoid it at all cost, had the father not decided to "Suicide by cop" the way he did, then we could have simply convinced the boy to post to his blog that he had been writing some well posted fiction, and a family of 4 would not be dead right now.

Either way the mission is complete and the general public is safer having fewer people exposed to the Abomination. I'd call this a good day.

A New Mandate

Life is a funny thing, it seems now that an old foe of mine has been "Semi-Confirmed" as KIA, that I have been reassigned to the detail involved in keep the general public quiet about the nature of what the organization I represent stands for. Why this blog alone is situated so that most "Uninvolved" person's coming across it will not even bat an eye and assume it's another work of fiction, in the fringe phenomenon known as "Slender-blogging"

But enough of that, I can focus on the future later, I should properly introduce myself,  I am, Inquisitor First Class Vergil,  I serve in a regular Monday through Friday job just like any other government employe.

It just so happens that this particular branch of the government is staffed by what the uneducated might call "Proxies" or people who are imbued with a small portion of Supernatural power by what the civilians call "The Slenderman". I am no exception. I am in fact one of my Organization's "Enhanced agents"

Besides enjoying increased strength, speed, agility, I also get the added benefit of a government paycheck, a badge, and access to NSA and Homeland security documents allowing me to perform my duty.

Which is keeping the public safe from the Slenderman, by reducing the amount of public information is out there about it. Often it's as simple as waive a badge, flash a gun, wear dark shades, and throw down some names like "FBI" or "CIA".

Other times it ends with a bullet and setting the house of fire.....

At the end of the day I cash my check, pay my bill like any other upstanding citizen, and take my girl out to the movies on Saturdays...

So you must be wondering, how did I find a job like this? Maybe your wondering how you can score this kind of job?

Well let me tell you how the organization found me. About 5 years, I was a member of our armed services, part of a Ranger division stationed in Afghanistan,  I joined the Military the day I graduated high school, I had been training since the Jr high, to hone my body, to train my mind, to ready myself for the life I wanted.

When September 11th hit I was fresh out of boot camp, and ready to perform justice for my country, but I still had to graduate Ranger School first. After that it was 3 years in Afghanistan, till my last mission there, where I had a close encounter with the Abomination. The team I was a part of, serving as a Sergent, had just finished raiding a series of caves, trying to hunt down and eradicate Taliban leaders hiding in those foothill...

We found a few of them, In pieces, It seems the Abomination found them first, and had torn them apart, as he did to most of my team, I held my ground with 3 others, making a tactical withdraw out of the cave complex, firing into the creature we saw. The young private standing to my right was decapitated by a wildly flailed appendage, the Lieutenant got lost his nerve and shot himself when his last magazine went dry.

I stood alone in the cave, facing the creature down with naught but a fragmentation grenade, something that I have the feeling would only serve to antagonize the creature, and kill me in the process. It did not strike, it offered me a new purpose in life, it gave me my power.

I went almost 6 months in Afghanistan, not telling a soul what happened, the official story was one of the Taliban fighters suicide bombed himself in the enclosed space. I was seen as damn lucky to even be alive... It was expected for the poor Sergent to be a bit "Touched" after something like that, the best thing for a man like that was of course some time back in the world.

It didn't take long for me to be picked up by the Organization, but that's a tale for another day. I got to go scare some kid who just started tweeting his encounter with the Abomination a visit... I think I'll pull the "MIB" angle this time, his history suggests he believes in aliens enough to make it work.