To Catch a Cultist

The coyotes, they sing at the park... the city life, it's falling to the sea. 
The winding roads are winding down, soon the flying man'll hit the ground. 
Their every swing brings me closer to crashing! 
The coyotes sing, they call for my death scream...

But I've come back for more. You should have locked your doors. You knew we were gunning for you. And we aren't gonna stop, not today or tomorrow.




And now that I have that incredibly irrelevant tangent out of the way, Hello.

Fracture here, of course. I'm here to give an update on the Black Lake situation. But first, here's an important note for you following us at home: these reports are being delayed.

The information from these next few posts are pre-written and have been put on a timer to span out the information in case any of the sentient cultists ravaging the town happen to be watching this blog. You can never be too careful nowadays. 



And now that that incredibly relevant tangent is out of the way, the update! Le Croix is back. She seems to have survived and better yet so has Maggot, no offense to Le Croix of course. But the real highlight here is they brought a timberwolf back with them. Mission fucking accomplished. Finally some good news.

We've got him tied up and locked away in cell under constant watch for the moment, you can never be too careful. Tomorrow, we're gonna 'interrogate' him and see what we can't learn. I've got my fingers crossed that he can lead us to the timberwolf camp. They'd have to have food there. They have to.

And fortunately enough, I've been able to talk Le Croix into doing the honors of the interrogation for us. I happen to know from my files on her that she can be very persuasive. Although I'm a bit concerned she might get out of hand and kill the timberwolf before we can get the answers we need out of him. I'd have one of my own men do it if I had any here that had any sort of experience with this kind of thing but it should be fine. I have faith that she'll do whats best to help these people. I know I can at least trust her to do that much...



Now as a special treat, since I didn't go on Le Croix's little expedition and thus can't comment on what they encountered up their myself, I had everyone who did go write up a report.

Snips' Report

(I didn't mention it in the last post, but I had Snips go with LeCroix and Maggot, can't show all your cards.)

Snips here reporting in to Captain Catman, my Lord and Guardian from afar behind a desk!

Howdy Fracture. Thanks for sending me on a mission with the horribly frigid bitch that shot me a few months back. That was great. Fuck you old man.

So, I got tasked as Overwatch this mission. Since apparently this is gonna hit the blog, I'll explain this for once. Overwatch means I take my sniper rifle, I climb real high, and then I sit on a roof and get to watch the operation and feed information to the ground team about things I can see that they can't and potentially provide covering fire from afar should it prove necessary.

Now, since we're trying to keep our location concealed, I was given explicate orders not to fire my gun under any circumstances. Not that Bitch Face LeCroix could be bothered to keep hers quiet.

So all I did was observe and report. But our communication lines were all fucked up. LeCroix doesn't have a radio piece. Only Maggot does and Maggot doesn't fucking talk, the useless little shit. So I could only inform half the team on anything with any sort of speed. To pass anything to LeCroix I had shoot the bitch a text. She's lucky she didn't get speared by a charging rakeling while she was checking her fucking phone.

Worst operation ever, seriously. I'm surprised they aren't both dead.

Now as for what I saw of the operation, they left and immediately moved behind a building to where I couldn't see them. They stayed gone for hours with little communication leaving me to wonder if I was wasting my fucking time. Then there was a large fight between the timberwolves and a pack of rakelings in a nearby street. And then LeCroix and Maggot came back with a  timberwolf and pack of campers hot on their trail.

Thank god the campers lost interest. The last fucking thing we would have needed is a fight on our fucking doorstep right now.

After all that, imagine my horrible fucking when I came down to greet them only to find out they had failed the primary objective. They didn't bring me back any fucking beer. Not a bottle, or can, or drop. This whole thing, horrible waste of time.

But hey, they brought back a timberwolf to be tortured, questioned, and gutted. That's something I guess.



Maggot's Report

How dare you insult my oath with a request for communication. Insult me further Fracture, and I will feed you your spleen.



LeCroix's Report

Black Lake is in a state of hostility; any sentient being is doing what they can to survive while the anarchists and beasts are do everything in their power to hunt down anything with a heartbeat. A self-appointed mission was set into motion, unexpected company of a child turned proxy (identification: Maggot) accompanied me into the wastelands that was once a town. A third member was added, a sniper (identification: Snips) who would remain stationed as an observer. Personally, she was far too chatty and obnoxious. I don’t regret shooting her during our previous encounter; amusingly enough she remembered who I was even in the dark of night.

Had I been a regular rookie the conditions on the outside would have brought me to my knees, luckily that was not the case. My temporary partner seemed to not be affected by our surroundings and I took faith on the fact he wouldn't be a nuisance because of it.

Our objective was a simple one: Capture a Timberwolf

The leader of operations (identification: Fracture) remained stationed at our current safe house. His condition currently is unwell; severely lacking sleep seems to be affecting his ability to work, or so I believe. It isn't to the point of being problematic but it is something noticeable, a health risk waiting to cripple the party. (Because you’re undoubtedly reading this, Fracture, I suggest you sleep; and if you have slept I suggest you sleep more.)

The reason for said mission was to discover the nest of the Timberwolves.

Maggot and I set out during the night, narrowly avoiding a waiting ambush of Rakelings (as the proxies have dubbed them). That was almost one hell of a miscommunication. We entered a manhole Maggot had spotted and decided to pass any obstacles underground, unfortunately we found our fair share lurking beneath. Not long after we entered something caught my attention; a large, serpentine-like creature darted from one pipe and into another right as Maggot was passing. My guess now is the creature was attempting to attack and missed. It went unnoticed to the boy; he was confused as to why I abruptly pulled him back behind my person.

I briefly described what I had witnessed to the boy and he didn’t have a clue. Backtracking would only delay things further; we didn’t have much more ground to cover by the looks of it either. I took aim with my gun and flashlight and led the way from there, both of us now alert to danger and moving swiftly.

The creature returned from behind my person, separating us and tackling me into a wall. It temporarily disoriented me; my vision became static as Maggot removed the creature with a tackle of his own. It managed to disarm the boy and spear him to the ground before I put several bullets into it. It fled immediately, leaving me without any answers as to whether it was dead or not. Maggot’s condition was fine and we proceeded out of the next manhole quickly.

We crept through alleyways until we found a herd of Timberwolves loudly circling a church, firing upon the flock of birds above it as a man stood on the roof and fired a flamethrower on any of the winged cretins that neared him. We stationed ourselves in a small antique store; Maggot pulled up surveillance on the computer and we staked out the scene. This went on for hours, to the point where I removed myself from the chair and took it upon myself to examine our surroundings.

The antique store was filled with knick knacks I didn’t care for; we disabled the alarm to prevent any possible accidents from alerting any surrounding monsters. I took it upon myself to acquire some of the older knives from one of the cases, though not as sharp they would still serve a useful purpose to distract or catch another off guard. Especially useful when trying to avoid being noticed, guns can be so noisy.

There was a safe beneath the case that used the same code as the security. Disabling that was a simple task but the contents within were curious. Again, knick knacks of no use; the only thing that alerted me to unusual behavior was the vial of black liquid (identification: Azoth). I was vaguely familiar with this; I returned it to the safe to prevent any form of exposure. It begged me to question though just why a shopkeeper was keeping such an item; despite the fact this was a cult town.

Impatience grew, I was used to staking out criminals but this wasn’t a mission that we could continue delaying on. Seeing how the Timberwolves were still circling the church even hours later we had to act, waiting was proving to be useless. We devised a plan based on Maggot’s uses; his ability to be a quick distraction would prove beneficial. He left and made himself known to the Timberwolves, successfully alerting and provoking them all at once. Just as quickly as he appeared he fled down the street, dodging away from their firearms. I stood by at the entrance of the alleyway and watched the main horde drive off, in search for the slowest biker. It appeared a Rakeling had similar intentions, but this time motorcycle beat monster and it was crushed beneath its tires. The transportation was wrecked and the man dismounted and moved quickly for the alleyway I was stationed in. I backed in further to avoid detection before grabbing hold of the man, disarming him and dragging him in further. The mutt struggled in the hold and I used one of the stolen knives to lessen his chances of escape by impaling it in his leg. Nothing he would bleed to death from, naturally.

Maggot was nowhere in sight and I had to decide the next course of action. Messaging Snips did nothing to help me in that time; the boy was off the grid for the moment from her opinion. I decided to continue with the primary objective and return the Timberwolf to the safe house. He was resisting greatly despite the injury and I was not about to risk having a noisy prisoner, I disoriented him with a blow to the head against the pavement below before we began our walk back.

The boy reappeared not too long after, with a tackle to the ground and a knife to my face. Realization broke through to him and he returned to standing and I returned to dragging the prisoner. We encountered a hooded figure stumbling as we neared the safe house, it approached us steadily and after demanding it to freeze (it obliged) and remove its hood (to which it did not oblige) it attacked. A corpse-like being tackled me the ground and I removed its weight from my form before taking aim. I fired two bullets into its chest and it shifted back slightly at the impact, otherwise there was no reaction. This wasn’t like the previous creatures that still reacted when injured; it appeared to either not have noticed it was shot or simply didn’t feel it. Its head tilted back and it began vomiting black-blue fluid upwards, I fired a bullet into its throat to cease its actions. The corpse stopped, still no reaction to the pain (should it have felt any). It leapt again towards my person and I moved out of its way, steadying my aim on its leg. It continued past me towards the prisoner and boy and I fired two rounds on its leg, successfully preventing it from taking to the air.

Maggot moved the Timberwolf aside and barely managed to dodge himself as the corpse made another attempt to leap. I took hold of its hoodie and pulled the corpse from the child, demanding he flee with the prisoner. He disobeyed and pulled out a knife, cutting the ankles deeply before motioning for me to abandon the corpse.

We returned to the safe house successfully and the Timberwolf was removed from my custody. Snips continued being chatty and I continued to ignore her behavior. The sooner this is over with the better, I could use some sleep.

-A.B. LeCroix

Up next, torture time! But first, I'm gonna take LeCroix up on her advice  and see if I get some sleep.

Wish us luck... but in the past tense because again, by the time you've seen these the next post should have already happened.

Fracture Out.