Outvoted three to one, it seems... I'm going to go with the second mission. Also, it seems that the system I originally imagined for the in-between bits between missions wasn't that smart an idea, so next time you guys can just say what kind of item/training you would like and I'll roll to see if you find it.
The moon was high in the sky as the team began to drive into the town Santo's Cove, passing by the seemingly endless plains on the cracked and abused road. Their car was no G-Man style SUV now, oh no, it was a hardy looking military jeep that Bakstur was currently in love with as he drove. This machine was everything Bakstur wanted from a car, it could take a beating and it could manuever. The plains turned to a town, and Bakstur subconsciously fiddled with the amulet, a diamond-shaped emerald. The girl in the Spirit Charming shop, who would be pretty much dismissed as a hippy in every other lifetime Bakstur could have lived except this one, said that the amulet would lull the demon away into a sleep. She was obtuse, but it was working. For once, his dreams didn't consist of mutilation and horror as they have been since he was a teen, and his thoughts were alone in his own mind.
However, she warned that the demon could break out if it was powered by a sudden infusion of pain and misery, so if he was badly wounded he would be in danger of losing himself.
He stopped the car at the house that was Aesir property, meaning they could rest at it if neeed. He looked at the others.
"We're here."Healthy
Crystal Clear
Light Revolver
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Eric looked up from his notes, and nodded. That chill in his spine was gone. Maybe he was going soft or James was lying, but it turned out that his nerves were just that: his nerves.
He had been doing research, not just on the artifact he wished to gain, but on the general situation.
He had learned a lot, there was plenty of information around from official (AesirWiki) to unofficial (His tinged by the paranormal but still mortal contacts, a godsend in this business). Aesir had a few allies, some of them with oddly familiar names (SCP Foundation, Assassins Order, X-Com, why did those names register as familar?), but have many enemies. Makes sense. What was utterly surprising to him was the fact that the Aesir Initiative had a seperate operation in the supernatural: they were allowing them to be free.
Well, free in a certain sense. They fitted them with devices that tracked them but also hid them from humanity, and they were operating under Aesir's laws and regulations, they had to agree to it, and they would be obviously sent to be contained if they were unreversably evil. The devices particularly worried Eric. They worked by sending a certain type of signal that told the brains of anyone around they were not seeing an obvious monster but a normal person, and the devices also sent another signal that allowed the person with the chip to see other paranormal beings. A check of his email revealed an order to get this chips installed for his team. So they did, and... it was a rather disorientating experience for all of them, and it was a good thing that it was at the weekend allowing them to get used to the rather bizarre world that was under the skin of what was thought to be the real world.
He stepped out of the car and waited for the others to step out before he spoke.
"Well, then. I got some information here, and we can do a few things here. We can go talk to the police, who aren't necromancers here, apparently. They may have some information. We could always check out the scenes of the crime itself. We don't need to go in a group, so we could split up and check each lead."Healthy
Crystal Clear
Blessed Hunting Rifle
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Kathryn's mind felt a lot cleaner then usual. Those monks were there at the mental resistence training, but they added in a few more tests to boot. Some of them would qualify as torture and some of them would be considered good meditation practices by buddhists. A hatable few would qualify for both. She felt like she just walked into her apartment after a long and weird holiday and found that someone had converted into a minimalist, ascetic wonder. She knew she was going to fuck it up again (A half-baked movie idea was lurking in the corner of her mind already, the festering mug of coffee on the desk in her brain) but she was enjoying it while it lasted, and she knew it was still going to be different.
She got out of the car and listened to Eric. She was curious as to how this mission was going to turn out. The idea that aliens are an accepted fact was intriging enough, just as intriguing as the revelation that Aesir wasn't just a mercenary company but a full blown supernatural conspiracy corpration, but it turns out that the lights in the sky over this fair town weren't aliens... It was mysterious. This could be an interesting mission.
Healthy
Crystal Clear
Pistol
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Ambrose was having a pretty weird week. Michael was still bothering her, both in reality and in her own mind via the wonderful emotion known as guilt. Then it turned out that a little chip currently implanted in her skin was lying to her since she was born using her own brain, which seemed less like a fundamental ally and more of a cowardly mercenary by the day. Michael was the more daunting issue, as the latter was pretty much solved. He wasn't dumb enough to actually look directly for her, but her silence only worried him further. He seemed to be trying to figure out what the hell was going on. As the car drove, she studied the last message he sent to her android.
He had got the basics down. He knew there was some organization, perhaps big, perhaps small, involved in her total disappearance. And he knew that something was wrong on a basic level with this whole business. He didn't seem to know much, but he was finding out more and more...The car stopped, and everyone (Including her) stepped out of the car. Eric explained what they could do, and she sighed and put the phone away. It was time to be a professional. It was time not for fuck ups, but for being a proper operative. It was time to be good.
Healthy
Crystal Clear
Pistol