Their Normality
Aidan finished putting down a maddened familiar. We were called by a concerned citizen about this mage. Weird, since we’re not exactly a first-responder office nor do we offer services beyond finding, investigating, and taking notes of certain anomalies we come across. When we got here, the Mage was barely alive and what we saw was the Mage performing Diabolist acts, sacrificing his powers, and summoning familiars, who immediately maddened when summoned.
Aidan and his freelancers wanted to take a crack at this. I was around, so they took them with me to looked at the apartment complex. Climbed the first floor, noticing the locked shutters, and arrived in the third where freelancers under Aidan just started firing at the familiars while the old man cut them down with his sword.
My guts told me something wasn’t right. I saw a door leaking with something else. Inside was this mold ridden passage. This door shouldn’t exist, especially when the door was sitting next to an open window. One of Aidan’s freelancers got too close, and he started vomiting mold.
Searching the database first. The query matched no result and all we know for sure was this thing wasn’t likely a part. Before calling the OB for this. We searched the room and found materials suggesting the Mage was trying to abandon his Mage Roots and turned into a warlock. The usual case for aspiring mages. They realize how bad they are at using spells. Then asked a demon or a devil for a career change.
It’s not unusual. The one thing’s unusual was the door leading out of nowhere. After keeping the footage, the materials, and the ramblings of this man. We had someone from the Otherside Bureau to poke on the door. It’s usually them who does the containment process and we are the guys who tell them to check on it lately. Kei told me how annoying it was since when she started with Eta. She didn’t have the attention, support, and the backing of the OB. But the office got a lot of attention and now they were willing because it’s profitable.
The OBs who got into the apartment started containing the apartment, putting signs, warnings, and then automated turrets programmed to warn any trespasser they’ll get shot if they continue here. We also got hit by their containment sprays, then told to wear breathing masks for safety.
When the operator opened the door. He read there were spores entering the filters of his breathing mask at an alarming rate and closed it off. After a few seconds of exposure, the man started vomiting mold as well. Seeing this, they got him into a scanner and sent a nanobot inside his throat to check his inside. No permanent damage, but he just ate a lot of alien contaminants and had to be dragged away. We also took our Freelancer to get squeezed out and saw how dangerous the door was. They called in folks from headquarters, who were in full hazmat gear, and were practically borged out to be unaffected by chemical hazards. We’re talking cybernetic organs with functions that can filter through anything you can’t breathe on.
The first one entered the door. We were behind this operator with a rugged laptop operating a drone, watching. Guy surveying the space’s walking was careful and you can tell how many functions he was in by the amount of softwares on his head activating to scan. Guy’s a living scanner, taking in samples, and then collecting them in this metal compartment he’s carrying.
He stopped. He seemed to have seen something in the corner of the room. Calmly, he cocked the rifle he’s carrying, deployed an auto-turret, and got into a defensible position.
“Unknown sighted. Characteristics are unknown. Fortifying position will engage fire. Radar showing blips. No sight. Cycling through optics… thermal spots. Control, please advise.”
“Maintain position. Operators converging in your position.”
“Possible multiple contacts. Keep your optics cycled.”
The two operators joined in and didn’t take long to support the first one to go in.
“This is lead. We’re experiencing an optics malfunction. Possible interference?”
“None so far.”
“Could it be a creature’s innate ability?”
“Keep watch. Rifles are free to fire.”
As their handler said that. They were calling a containment unit to surround the apartment and 30 minutes in; we had a cargo VTOL hovering above the apartment complex and a team of containment squad even more cyber than the operators.
“We made contact. Auto-turrets are suppressed. Creatures are silicon, mold, and rubbery. Mimicking humanoid appearance. Firing normal rounds, no effects. Firing anti-humanoid rounds, no effect. Creature’s physical body can’t be hit. Switching to EMP rounds, little success. Creature is emitting sound waves, cybernetics are slightly malfunctioning, resetting. Control, we’re switching to arcane rounds.”
“You may switch.”
The operators switched to magically infused rounds and started shooting at the creature. The creature deflected them, but their bullets hit.
“Creature confirmed to be susceptible to arcane rounds. Ineffective. They seem to operate by phasing. Will have to retreat for now. Please form a firing solution.”
The handler, watching the footage, switched off and called in help from OB’s Guardian Angel. He took out this module from his pocket and inserted it in a slot on the side of his head where he immediately became possessed. The ‘module’ he slotted in got immediately fried, and he came out of the stupor with a firing solution. Guardian Angel, OB’s most powerful and had been the backbone of the Bureau in its decision when it comes to the supernatural.
“Angel says we need to leave and contain it. Possible dimension entity.”
Aidan grimaced hearing Angel’s judgment. The freelancers were brilliantly ignorant when Angel said something like this. It’s a judgment that usually means everything is so fucked you need to get out and contain it.
The operators got out of the containment and the rest of the armored unit breached the apartment building and pointed their barrels at the door.
When the containment unit arrived at the scene carrying a payload. I got worried. Although the OB knows what they are doing, it still makes me worried about how they are tackling this. If you know the OB enough, they usually result in a shameless atomic annihilation as their card. You can complain a lot about the OB’s policies, but it’s their constant good choices and paranoia about keeping the world alive.
They are professionals in the otherworldly trade and once they decide to bring out their nuclear bombs. It means they aren’t going to wait and let this problem become another Shanghai Risk Event. How we managed to find something like this because of a civilian call amazed and terrified us. The freelancers were ignorant, but Aidan knew we just narrowly avoided being consumed by an entity beyond our understanding. It’s no demon, angel or monster. It’s an anomaly beyond what we are usually up against and taking chances on having this thing get out was not a possibility we’d like to think about.
With the containment sections sealed. They detonated the bomb inside the space and checked for radiation. Our Geiger counters spiked and after two hours of waiting. The operators went back into full gear again and checked the area.
The narrow passages became a wasteland. A white space without end.
“Radiation beyond cybernetic. No signs of the entity, over.”
“Roger that. Command says to take no risks. Sending in the last bomb for confirmation.”
“Roger.”
The operators got out again and just nuked the space again, as if making sure it won’t ever happen again. You might think it’s absurd or too much, but the Bureau doesn’t play around when concerning dimensional entities who are trying to crawl into our world through doors and portals.
It’s actually concerning how many aberrant spaces have been happening. Infinite spaces. Doors appearing in these narrow passageways are full of mold and all kinds of horror we barely understand.
The OB has issued statements, PSAs, and infomercials on what to do when you suddenly find a new door in your apartment. After dealing with the entity, they had a VTOL and the units literally ripped the door out of the wall and carried it into this metal compartment and spirited it away. The Bureau decided to check on the apartments, forcing the owner of the building to give them access to every room and found another door in the basement of the apartment, behind broken furniture and a wardrobe leading to another space similar to what they’ve been. Thankfully, entering the door, the operators who went in confirmed the place were irradiated and radioed back for decontamination and recovery of the door as well.
It was beyond the usual. The Freelancers who were accompanying us were questioning the reality of all things and asked many questions to Aidan, who replied in a dull manner how they’ve to get used to it.
“You worry about this when we have idiots making contracts with devils and you have to pay some good shaman for some lucky ring for your girl? Get used to it, fools.”
Aidan’s right. We have corpo-mages trying to sell you their magical products, monsters outside of cities, and cities fighting against aberrations, and somehow a door opening to another dimension surprised them. Not to mention the Shanghai Risk Event itself was big enough. Then again, most of those who started in this line of work were too busy in their own world, trying to make it big, keeping it street-level to worry about some dimensional entity or some man-made God.
You live in this world for a while and you’d understand how normal this was to them. To grow up knowing monsters exist and learn how to avoid them makes people slightly less afraid of them and just think of them as just bigger, stronger animals they hope to never encounter. And with how things are all over the world, not even the threat of a monster could spook a salaryman doing a 9-5 job and was probably more afraid of their employer than some dimensional entity.
Still, it spooked the freelancers, and Aidan knew he had to take care of them before sending them home. I separated from his group and carried the data with me back to the office, where I found Kei working her ass off to take care of the paperwork.
She holds one hand up. “You’ll be taking care of that.”
“I will. I don’t think you’d want this on your plate.”
I sat down. Opened my workstation computer and started transferring the data I got from the Bureau agents who were willing to share the data with us. Kei wasn’t interested, but she still took a look at the data.
“Another space?”
“Yeah. Two doors with a dimensional entity. Nuked the place.”
“It’s great the Bureau doesn’t fuck around.”
“Doubt they’re willing for another round of public criticism and having the blood of millions on their hands.”
“How’s the guy under Old Man?”
“Fine. Got spooked by the magic doors.”
“Just imagine if you were standing in front of a man who got transported from a year before the moon landing and you had to explain it all to him.”
“I’ll go crazy just explaining our recent custom of cutting our arms for stronger ones. Or should I start with the fact we’ve demons and devils roaming the world?”
“Heh, it’d be funny. Also, do you think this has any relation to the disease causing the Mages to take their skin off?”
“Hard to say, since this one wasn’t flayed.”
“Guess we keep digging until we find more of these idiots.”
I guess when you survive a man-made god. It’s hard to be surprised. Even if we didn’t encounter one, I doubt we’d have some reaction. When the supernatural becomes commonplace, you start thinking about them as a part of life.
You don’t get shocked by a typhoon or a hurricane when one comes. You’d hate them, be annoyed when it wreaks havoc, but you consider these things as a part of the world you lived in. At the end of the day, you still have to do your job and live on until the day you die.
karsev THANKS FOR READING!
DON"T FORGET TO ADD IT YOUR LIBRARY AND SHARE!
Their Normality
Aidan finished putting down a maddened familiar. We were called by a concerned citizen about this mage. Weird, since we’re not exactly a first-responder office nor do we offer services beyond finding, investigating, and taking notes of certain anomalies we come across. When we got here, the Mage was barely alive and what we saw was the Mage performing Diabolist acts, sacrificing his powers, and summoning familiars, who immediately maddened when summoned.
Aidan and his freelancers wanted to take a crack at this. I was around, so they took them with me to looked at the apartment complex. Climbed the first floor, noticing the locked shutters, and arrived in the third where freelancers under Aidan just started firing at the familiars while the old man cut them down with his sword.
My guts told me something wasn’t right. I saw a door leaking with something else. Inside was this mold ridden passage. This door shouldn’t exist, especially when the door was sitting next to an open window. One of Aidan’s freelancers got too close, and he started vomiting mold.
Searching the database first. The query matched no result and all we know for sure was this thing wasn’t likely a part. Before calling the OB for this. We searched the room and found materials suggesting the Mage was trying to abandon his Mage Roots and turned into a warlock. The usual case for aspiring mages. They realize how bad they are at using spells. Then asked a demon or a devil for a career change.
It’s not unusual. The one thing’s unusual was the door leading out of nowhere. After keeping the footage, the materials, and the ramblings of this man. We had someone from the Otherside Bureau to poke on the door. It’s usually them who does the containment process and we are the guys who tell them to check on it lately. Kei told me how annoying it was since when she started with Eta. She didn’t have the attention, support, and the backing of the OB. But the office got a lot of attention and now they were willing because it’s profitable.
The OBs who got into the apartment started containing the apartment, putting signs, warnings, and then automated turrets programmed to warn any trespasser they’ll get shot if they continue here. We also got hit by their containment sprays, then told to wear breathing masks for safety.
When the operator opened the door. He read there were spores entering the filters of his breathing mask at an alarming rate and closed it off. After a few seconds of exposure, the man started vomiting mold as well. Seeing this, they got him into a scanner and sent a nanobot inside his throat to check his inside. No permanent damage, but he just ate a lot of alien contaminants and had to be dragged away. We also took our Freelancer to get squeezed out and saw how dangerous the door was. They called in folks from headquarters, who were in full hazmat gear, and were practically borged out to be unaffected by chemical hazards. We’re talking cybernetic organs with functions that can filter through anything you can’t breathe on.
The first one entered the door. We were behind this operator with a rugged laptop operating a drone, watching. Guy surveying the space’s walking was careful and you can tell how many functions he was in by the amount of softwares on his head activating to scan. Guy’s a living scanner, taking in samples, and then collecting them in this metal compartment he’s carrying.
He stopped. He seemed to have seen something in the corner of the room. Calmly, he cocked the rifle he’s carrying, deployed an auto-turret, and got into a defensible position.
“Unknown sighted. Characteristics are unknown. Fortifying position will engage fire. Radar showing blips. No sight. Cycling through optics… thermal spots. Control, please advise.”
“Maintain position. Operators converging in your position.”
“Possible multiple contacts. Keep your optics cycled.”
The two operators joined in and didn’t take long to support the first one to go in.
“This is lead. We’re experiencing an optics malfunction. Possible interference?”
“None so far.”
“Could it be a creature’s innate ability?”
“Keep watch. Rifles are free to fire.”
As their handler said that. They were calling a containment unit to surround the apartment and 30 minutes in; we had a cargo VTOL hovering above the apartment complex and a team of containment squad even more cyber than the operators.
“We made contact. Auto-turrets are suppressed. Creatures are silicon, mold, and rubbery. Mimicking humanoid appearance. Firing normal rounds, no effects. Firing anti-humanoid rounds, no effect. Creature’s physical body can’t be hit. Switching to EMP rounds, little success. Creature is emitting sound waves, cybernetics are slightly malfunctioning, resetting. Control, we’re switching to arcane rounds.”
“You may switch.”
The operators switched to magically infused rounds and started shooting at the creature. The creature deflected them, but their bullets hit.
“Creature confirmed to be susceptible to arcane rounds. Ineffective. They seem to operate by phasing. Will have to retreat for now. Please form a firing solution.”
The handler, watching the footage, switched off and called in help from OB’s Guardian Angel. He took out this module from his pocket and inserted it in a slot on the side of his head where he immediately became possessed. The ‘module’ he slotted in got immediately fried, and he came out of the stupor with a firing solution. Guardian Angel, OB’s most powerful and had been the backbone of the Bureau in its decision when it comes to the supernatural.
“Angel says we need to leave and contain it. Possible dimension entity.”
Aidan grimaced hearing Angel’s judgment. The freelancers were brilliantly ignorant when Angel said something like this. It’s a judgment that usually means everything is so fucked you need to get out and contain it.
The operators got out of the containment and the rest of the armored unit breached the apartment building and pointed their barrels at the door.
When the containment unit arrived at the scene carrying a payload. I got worried. Although the OB knows what they are doing, it still makes me worried about how they are tackling this. If you know the OB enough, they usually result in a shameless atomic annihilation as their card. You can complain a lot about the OB’s policies, but it’s their constant good choices and paranoia about keeping the world alive.
They are professionals in the otherworldly trade and once they decide to bring out their nuclear bombs. It means they aren’t going to wait and let this problem become another Shanghai Risk Event. How we managed to find something like this because of a civilian call amazed and terrified us. The freelancers were ignorant, but Aidan knew we just narrowly avoided being consumed by an entity beyond our understanding. It’s no demon, angel or monster. It’s an anomaly beyond what we are usually up against and taking chances on having this thing get out was not a possibility we’d like to think about.
With the containment sections sealed. They detonated the bomb inside the space and checked for radiation. Our Geiger counters spiked and after two hours of waiting. The operators went back into full gear again and checked the area.
The narrow passages became a wasteland. A white space without end.
“Radiation beyond cybernetic. No signs of the entity, over.”
“Roger that. Command says to take no risks. Sending in the last bomb for confirmation.”
“Roger.”
The operators got out again and just nuked the space again, as if making sure it won’t ever happen again. You might think it’s absurd or too much, but the Bureau doesn’t play around when concerning dimensional entities who are trying to crawl into our world through doors and portals.
It’s actually concerning how many aberrant spaces have been happening. Infinite spaces. Doors appearing in these narrow passageways are full of mold and all kinds of horror we barely understand.
The OB has issued statements, PSAs, and infomercials on what to do when you suddenly find a new door in your apartment. After dealing with the entity, they had a VTOL and the units literally ripped the door out of the wall and carried it into this metal compartment and spirited it away. The Bureau decided to check on the apartments, forcing the owner of the building to give them access to every room and found another door in the basement of the apartment, behind broken furniture and a wardrobe leading to another space similar to what they’ve been. Thankfully, entering the door, the operators who went in confirmed the place were irradiated and radioed back for decontamination and recovery of the door as well.
It was beyond the usual. The Freelancers who were accompanying us were questioning the reality of all things and asked many questions to Aidan, who replied in a dull manner how they’ve to get used to it.
“You worry about this when we have idiots making contracts with devils and you have to pay some good shaman for some lucky ring for your girl? Get used to it, fools.”
Aidan’s right. We have corpo-mages trying to sell you their magical products, monsters outside of cities, and cities fighting against aberrations, and somehow a door opening to another dimension surprised them. Not to mention the Shanghai Risk Event itself was big enough. Then again, most of those who started in this line of work were too busy in their own world, trying to make it big, keeping it street-level to worry about some dimensional entity or some man-made God.
You live in this world for a while and you’d understand how normal this was to them. To grow up knowing monsters exist and learn how to avoid them makes people slightly less afraid of them and just think of them as just bigger, stronger animals they hope to never encounter. And with how things are all over the world, not even the threat of a monster could spook a salaryman doing a 9-5 job and was probably more afraid of their employer than some dimensional entity.
Still, it spooked the freelancers, and Aidan knew he had to take care of them before sending them home. I separated from his group and carried the data with me back to the office, where I found Kei working her ass off to take care of the paperwork.
She holds one hand up. “You’ll be taking care of that.”
“I will. I don’t think you’d want this on your plate.”
I sat down. Opened my workstation computer and started transferring the data I got from the Bureau agents who were willing to share the data with us. Kei wasn’t interested, but she still took a look at the data.
“Another space?”
“Yeah. Two doors with a dimensional entity. Nuked the place.”
“It’s great the Bureau doesn’t fuck around.”
“Doubt they’re willing for another round of public criticism and having the blood of millions on their hands.”
“How’s the guy under Old Man?”
“Fine. Got spooked by the magic doors.”
“Just imagine if you were standing in front of a man who got transported from a year before the moon landing and you had to explain it all to him.”
“I’ll go crazy just explaining our recent custom of cutting our arms for stronger ones. Or should I start with the fact we’ve demons and devils roaming the world?”
“Heh, it’d be funny. Also, do you think this has any relation to the disease causing the Mages to take their skin off?”
“Hard to say, since this one wasn’t flayed.”
“Guess we keep digging until we find more of these idiots.”
I guess when you survive a man-made god. It’s hard to be surprised. Even if we didn’t encounter one, I doubt we’d have some reaction. When the supernatural becomes commonplace, you start thinking about them as a part of life.
You don’t get shocked by a typhoon or a hurricane when one comes. You’d hate them, be annoyed when it wreaks havoc, but you consider these things as a part of the world you lived in. At the end of the day, you still have to do your job and live on until the day you die.
karsev THANKS FOR READING!
DON"T FORGET TO ADD IT YOUR LIBRARY AND SHARE!
